NIniels_bom·Dec 16, 2021
Doesn't seem very active: https://github.com/spencertipping/caterwaul/graphs/code-freq...
In Caterwaul: A JavaScript-to-JavaScript Compilerspencertipping
caterwaul
Perl2010–2021
spencertipping / caterwaul
caterwaul
A Javascript-to-Javascript compiler
5Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
176GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A Javascript-to-Javascript compiler
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2010-11-07 01:42:30 UTC to 2021-12-16 13:40:04 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesThere is also a literate markdown version of the implementation if I'm reading it correctly.
https://github.com/spencertipping/caterwaul/blob/1.3-es5/src...
In Caterwaul: A JavaScript-to-JavaScript CompilerCaterwaul: A JavaScript-to-JavaScript Compiler
74 points · Open discussionCaterwaul: A JavaScript-to-JavaScript Compiler
2 points · Open discussionWell actually, I did end up writing Lisp on top of Javascript this way: http://github.com/spencertipping/caterwaul.
The basic mechanism is to call f.toString() on some function, then construct a new one the way you want it using either eval() (for non-IE browsers), or new Function(code) (for all browsers). Caterwaul leverages this by implementing a JS parser, defining a macro syntax, and letting you determine how the code gets rewritten. (So you can do things like let[x = 5] in x + 1, which is valid JS to begin with but nobody would ever use it :) )
In Ask HN: What languages/tech do you want to be using in 5 years?I don't know if this is the kind of thing that most JS folks will go for, but I've found it useful in both node.js work and on the client-side:
http://github.com/spencertipping/caterwaul
Feedback totally welcome.
15 points · Open discussion