CLI Reference

The AHA! compiler is a single binary that lexes, parses, generates LLVM IR, and JIT-executes your program. You drive it entirely from the command line.

Options

Option	Description
`--file <path>`	Source file to compile and execute
`--emit-ir <path>`	Save the generated LLVM IR to a file
`--version`	Print the compiler version
`--help`	Show usage information

Running a Program

cargo run --release -- --file example.aha

The compiler walks the full pipeline — lexing, parsing, type checking, LLVM code generation — and then JIT-executes the result:

--- AHA! COMPILER ---
Reading file: example.aha

[1] LEXING...
[2] PARSING...
Parsing successful!

[3] CODE GENERATION...
LLVM IR generated successfully!

--- LLVM IR OUTPUT ---
; ModuleID = 'aha_module'
...
----------------------

[4] EXECUTION (JIT)...
Program executed successfully. Result: 20

Emitting LLVM IR

Use --emit-ir to write the generated IR to a file — handy for inspecting exactly what the compiler produces:

cargo run --release -- --file example.aha --emit-ir out.ll

The out.ll file contains the textual LLVM IR (; ModuleID = 'aha_module' …) that the JIT executes.

Version & Help

cargo run --release -- --version
cargo run --release -- --help

After Building a Release Binary

Once you cargo build --release, the compiler lives at target/release/aha and can be invoked directly:

./target/release/aha --file example.aha

See Getting Started for build instructions.