writeonce/docs/stories/language-runtime-database/in-progress/36-operator-parity.md

iteration	status
36	in-progress

Iteration 36 — operator parity: not, bitwise, hex literals, compound assigns

Format: fiberloom product/story-iteration-template. Part of Story — one language, one runtime, one database, one binary.

Inserted 2026-08-22, forks settled the same day (decisions below, story-19 discipline). Driver: a gap survey of the operator surface against the Go reference checkout (.dev/reference/go — src/go/token/token.go, spec §Arithmetic operators) found four holes that every mainstream language covers. The survey also found a latent defect: +=/-= are lexed (lexer.ml:541/548, tokens at token.ml:149-150) but no parser rule consumes them — dead tokens since the haxe-parity control-surface task, zero uses in the corpus, so x += 1 today dies as a generic WO-E101 instead of working or being honestly absent.

The driving consumer is iteration 34 (crypto builtins): HMAC's ipad/opad step is a byte-wise XOR, and the doctrine question recorded there — C-side builtin vs pure-.wo — is unanswerable while the language cannot spell XOR at all. Secondary consumer: http/auth.wo's pure-.wo base64 does with division/modulo what shifts and masks say directly.

Plan: 2026-08-22-operator-parity.md (5 tasks: lexer/tokens; AST/parser incl. compound-assign desugar; type checker incl. literal shift-count rejection; emit + VM opcodes .wob v6; corpus/gates/docs closeout).

CODE LANDED 2026-08-22 (branch operator-parity), full stack in one day: tokens/lexer (incl. hex 0x / binary 0b / _ separators), Go-rung parsing, WO-E201 Int-only/Bool-only checking, WO-E223 literal shift rejection, opcodes WOP_BAND..WOP_SHR 42-46 + WO_T_SHIFT as .wob v6. The dead-token defect is closed: x += 1 parses (all five compound assigns, parse-time sugar — the desugar-equivalence contract incl. double index-eval is in compiler/src/CODE-LOGIC.md). Gates: woc-test 543/0, wovm-test ASan both flavors, oop-accept ALL MET, deps-accept 8/0, web-app 26/0 — all unchanged. Deviation by developer directive: NO test fixtures were written — acceptance is MANUAL via the new sample docs/examples/operators/ (woc ., run, read the ok/FAIL lines; trap mode proves WO_T_SHIFT). The corpus pins this plan called for (grouping, arithmetic >>, ipad/opad, trap) live in that sample instead. Status stays in-progress until the developer's manual pass; the AC below reads as written pre-deviation.

Why this iteration exists

The expression grammar (parser.ml ~594, token.ml:134-150) stops at: arithmetic + - * / %, concat .., comparison == != < <= > >=, logical and/or, unary minus. Four common gaps, in priority order:

1. No boolean negation. No not, no !, no unary NOT node in the AST. The only spelling is x == false — every caller pays, every day. Highest value for smallest surface.
2. No bitwise operators. No &, |, ^, <<, >> in any form. Blocks iteration 34's HMAC honestly; base64/multipart boundary code emulates masks with arithmetic.
3. No hex/binary integer literals. The lexer scans decimal digit runs only (lexer.ml:386 on). Bitwise code without 0xFF masks is write-only.
4. Compound assigns half-promised. +=/-= lex but never parse (the latent defect above); *= /= %= do not exist at all.

Deliberately NOT gaps (doctrine, not omission): &&/||/! symbol forms (words won — KwAnd/KwOr precedent), ternary ?: (switch is already an expression, parser.ml:1181), ++/--, function values, inheritance-family keywords (WO-E105 rejects them by name).

Goals

• not keyword, unary boolean, sitting with unary minus in the grammar (settled below: Lua placement, binds tighter than comparison). Bool-only operand, diagnosed like every other type error.
• Five bitwise operators on Int only: & AND, | OR, ^ XOR, << left shift, >> right shift. Precedence copies Go's C-trap fix (token.go:266-280): &/<</>> at the multiplicative level, |/^ at the additive level — both ABOVE comparison, so x & mask == 0 groups the AND first. Complement is spelled -1 ^ x (single signed 64-bit Int makes Go's mask rule collapse to exactly this); no ~, no unary ^, no &^.
• Hex and binary literals: 0x and 0b prefixes on Int, plus _ digit separators in all integer forms. Decimal lexing stays byte-identical for every existing fixture (the iteration-19 discipline).
• Compound assigns wired: += -= parse into the existing assignment statement (resurrecting the dead tokens), *= /= %= join them. Statement-level sugar over the existing place logic — no new AST evaluation semantics.
• Runtime: new i64 register opcodes beside WOP_ADD..WOP_NEG (runtime/src/wob.h:194) for AND/OR/XOR/SHL/SHR (+NOT if the emitter wants it); .wob version bump, loader validation, disasm coverage — the v5 (Float/Bytes) change is the template.

Settled decisions (2026-08-22)

1. >> is arithmetic (sign-extending). Go's own choice for signed integers, and writeonce has exactly one Int, signed 64-bit. For the driving consumers the fork is moot anyway — crypto/base64 shift byte-range values whose sign bit is never set, where arithmetic and logical are bit-identical. No logical-shift operator ships; a caller who wants zero-fill masks first.
2. Out-of-range shift count traps, like DIV0. Valid counts are 0..63; a negative or ≥64 count at run time is a named trap on the same machinery as WOP_DIV's DIV0 (wob.h:197) — the established Int honesty precedent (story 19 kept the trap deliberately). NOT Go's saturate-to-0/-1 (spec surface serving generic-width code writeonce doesn't have) and NOT hardware masking (x86's count%64 makes x << 64 == x, the classic silent wat). Real code shifts by literals: when the count is a literal, the compiler rejects it at emit time and the trap never runs.
3. not sits at the unary level, beside minus (Lua placement). not a == b parses (not a) == b. The grammar's ordering is already anchored to Lua by name (parser.ml ~601 "This ordering matches Lua's"), and joining parse_unary adds zero new precedence rungs. Python's looser placement reads closer to English, but it buys a new rung to prevent a misparse that Bool-only typing already converts into a compile error in every mixed-type case; the one silent case (Bool compared to Bool through not) gets a pinned fixture so the choice stays visible. if not done and while not empty() — the actual daily uses — read identically under both.

Acceptance Criteria

• Given the corpus, when fixtures land for not (plain, chained with and/or, non-Bool operand diagnosed), each bitwise operator, precedence pins (x & mask == 0 and one shift-vs-additive case), hex/binary/underscore literals (value-identical to decimal twins), out-of-range shift (literal count rejected at compile time, variable count trapping at run time), the not a == b grouping pin, and all five compound assigns on let/field/index places, then corpus passes with zero regressions on every pre-existing fixture.
• Given iteration 34's ipad/opad step written in pure .wo with ^ over byte_at values, when it runs against an RFC 2104 test vector's intermediate, then the bytes match — the consumer that motivated the iteration is demonstrably unblocked.
• Given the existing gates (just corpus-equivalent, just web-app, just deps-accept, test_wal), when the iteration lands, then all pass unchanged — the .wob bump breaks no replay/loader path.
• Given x += 1 in a fixture today-vs-after, when compiled, then the before is the recorded WO-E101 and the after executes — the dead-token defect is provably closed, not papered over.

Out Of Scope

Unary complement operator (spell -1 ^ x), Go's &^ AND-NOT, bitwise compound assigns (&= family), ++/--, ternary, symbol forms &&/||/!, bitwise on Float/Bytes/Bool, overflow-checked arithmetic changes, octal literals.

Proposed Solution

Lexer: extend the operator switch (the +/+= two-char pattern at lexer.ml:541-548 is the template) for the five operators and the three new compound assigns; extend the digit scanner with 0x/0b prefix branches and _ skipping, leaving the bare-decimal path untouched. Parser: two new precedence rungs threaded into the existing recursive-descent chain exactly where Go's table says; not joins parse_unary; compound assigns join the statement that already matches Token.Eq (parser.ml:510). Types: all five operators and not are Int -> Int -> Int / Bool -> Bool in the same checker table that owns +. Emit/runtime: new opcodes in wob.h's i64 block, WOB_VERSION bump, interpreter cases beside the existing wrapping arithmetic, disasm names. The forks are settled above, so no separate spec is owed (the story-19 deviation precedent: format decisions recorded normatively where they land, reasoning in CODE-LOGIC.md); the plan follows once this story is approved on the board.