Overview

Language definition

Starlark is a dialect of Python intended for use as a configuration language. A Starlark interpreter is typically embedded within a larger application, and this application may define additional domain-specific functions and data types beyond those provided by the core language. For example, Starlark is embedded within (and was originally developed for) the Bazel build tool, and Bazel’s build language is based on Starlark.

This document describes the Go implementation of Starlark at go.starlark.net/starlark. The language it defines is similar but not identical to the Java-based implementation used by Bazel. We identify places where their behaviors differ, and an appendix provides a summary of those differences. We plan to converge both implementations on a single specification.

This document is maintained by Alan Donovan adonovan@google.com. It was influenced by the Python specification, Copyright 1990–2017, Python Software Foundation, and the Go specification, Copyright 2009–2017, The Go Authors.

Starlark was designed and implemented in Java by Laurent Le Brun, Dmitry Lomov, Jon Brandvin, and Damien Martin-Guillerez, standing on the shoulders of the Python community. The Go implementation was written by Alan Donovan and Jay Conrod; its scanner was derived from one written by Russ Cox.

Overview

Starlark is an untyped dynamic language with high-level data types, first-class functions with lexical scope, and automatic memory management or garbage collection.

Starlark is strongly influenced by Python, and is almost a subset of that language. In particular, its data types and syntax for statements and expressions will be very familiar to any Python programmer. However, Starlark is intended not for writing applications but for expressing configuration: its programs are short-lived and have no external side effects and their main result is structured data or side effects on the host application. As a result, Starlark has no need for classes, exceptions, reflection, concurrency, and other such features of Python.

Starlark execution is deterministic: all functions and operators in the core language produce the same execution each time the program is run; there are no sources of random numbers, clocks, or unspecified iterators. This makes Starlark suitable for use in applications where reproducibility is paramount, such as build tools.