Learn
Basic patterns to get you started.
Declaring a variable
To declare a variable:
let name be value
let
begins the variable declaration. You can name the variable anything—try a noun! A special thing about names in this language is that you can use regular expressions in them.
Regular expressions
Regular expressions are a sequence of characters that specify a search pattern. With a regular expression, you can describe a range of strings instead of just one. Try the pipe operator, the plus operator, the question operator, and parentheses for grouping.
RegExr is a great resource to play around with different expressions.
Declaring a function
To declare a function:
to name—:
† do things here.
to
begins the function declaration. You can name it anything—try a verb! You can also use regular expressions for function names. The colon begins the block and the dot ends it.
Returning a value
To return a value from a function:
to name—:
& value.
The ampersand takes the place of the return keyword in other languages.
Writing comments
To write a comment:
† this is a comment
The dagger is a specialised character typically used to begin a footnote in literature, often when the asterisk has been used for a previous footnote on the same page. Here, it’s used in a similar context of denoting additional information as a comment in the code. The web editor gives an easy way to insert the symbol, but you can also type OptionT on Mac.
Describing a condition
To write an if statement:
if—condition—:
† do things if true.
To write a while statement:
while—condition—:
† do things while true.
If and while statements do things in their body if the condition given is true. The difference is that if statements will perform the action just once; while statements will keep checking the condition and performing the action as long as it’s true. Similar to the function, a colon begins the block and a dot ends it.