I feel like my idea is missing a crucial piece. Like C without the preprocessor. It needs to be able to generate or selectively compose new machines while executing, triggered by other portions of the matching process.

On the bright side, I still have the uppercase alphabet, all the punctuation, and most of the lowercase letters to spare. So I could make uppercase letters be "macros", or named code fragments.

On the bright side, I still have the uppercase alphabet, all the punctuation, and most of the lowercase letters to spare. So I could make uppercase letters be "macros", or named code fragments.

I posted an answer, although most features are not yet implemented

@feersum I actually didn't expect an answer (of any kind) this soon.

My ideas so far for my language involve taking input into a block or line data structure. Depending on how the user plans on searching/modifying the input, the data will be structured differently (possibly with an enum input to a function). This is for efficiency. A standard Block might be stored in something like a Numpy matrix, but if helpful, it could be stored as a 2D array of nodes that are doubly-linked in all directions, possibly even with all neighbors to facilitate traversal.

A Block could be searched for a pattern, transformed like a matrix, or modified according to a set of rules repeatedly (like Conway's Game of Life).