You can compile any YAMLScript program that has a main function to a machine native binary executable.

This is done using the ys --compile --binary command.

For example, if you have a file named hello.ys with the following content:

!yamlscript/v0

defn main(name='world'):
  say: 'Hello, $name!'

You can run:

$ time ys --compile --binary hello.ys
* Compiling YAMLScript 'hello.ys' to 'hello' executable
* Setting up build env in '/tmp/tmp.W0u4SGljdY'
* This may take a few minutes...
[1/8] Initializing              (3.1s @ 0.24GB)
[2/8] Performing analysis               (12.2s @ 0.64GB)
[3/8] Building universe         (1.8s @ 0.45GB)
[4/8] Parsing methods           (1.6s @ 0.46GB)
[5/8] Inlining methods          (1.4s @ 0.63GB)
[6/8] Compiling methods         (17.7s @ 0.43GB)
[7/8] Laying out methods                (1.0s @ 0.49GB)
[8/8] Creating image            (1.7s @ 0.54GB)
* Compiled YAMLScript 'hello.ys' to 'hello' executable

real    0m48.929s
user    6m44.965s
sys     0m5.095s
$ ls -lh hello
-rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 13M Sep 10 15:04 hello*

Note that the compilation takes some time and the resulting binary is quite large.

Let's try it out:

$ time ./hello
Hello, world!

real    0m0.014s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m0.013s
$ time ./hello Bob
Hello, Bob!

real    0m0.014s
user    0m0.005s
sys     0m0.010s

Let's compare the 14ms runtime to using the ys interpreter with -e:

$ time ys -e 'defn main(name="world"): say("Hello, $name!")'
Hello, world!

real    0m0.034s
user    0m0.019s
sys     0m0.017s

The binary is about 2.5 times faster than the interpreter in this case.

Note that we can even compile the one-liner if we want to:

$ ys --compile --binary -e 'defn main(name="world"): say("Hello, $name!")'
... time passes ...
* Compiled YAMLScript '-e' to './NO-NAME' executable

Since there is no input file, the binary is named NO-NAME.

Optionally, you can use the --output=<file-name> to specify the output file name.

The options listed above have short names as well:

$ ys -cbo say-hi hello.ys
* Compiling YAMLScript 'hello.ys' to 'say-hi' executable
...