The modern and fun way to program.
Let’s write a simple Hello World program!
We type the following code into a file named hello.sm:
import std.io;
func main(){
io.println("Hello, world!");
}
And we call smudge hello.sm: voilà! Hello, world! appears on the screen.
It’s also possible to make the program directly executable by adding the following line at the start of the file:
#! /usr/bin/smudge
This, called hashbang or shabang, it’s a special Unix instruction that tells the shell where is located the interpreter for the script.
Now it’s possible to run it by simply typing ./hello.sm.
This script is called main script (and its box the main box), because
it contains the main function.
As you can see, you can declare and define a function with the func keyword.
We’ll deepen functions later.
When you run a program written in Smudge, you have to pass as argument to the interpreter only the main script: all other scripts are automatically found thanks to the box system.
The first line of the program imports the box std.io (which is part of the SSL, the Smudge Standard Library) with the label io.
Boxes are the Smudge way to make the code modular, clear and self-explaining.
Each source file has its own box which can be imported from other boxes.
The import syntaxes are the following:
import <path>.<name>;
import <path>.<name> = <label>;
<path> cannot contain spaces and instead of slashes (i.e. /) it has dots (i.e. .).
<name> is the name of the file whose box has to be imported. Note: each box must have extension .sm (the main box is an exception), which is not part of <name>.
<label> is the name used by the current box as link to the imported box, in the first
syntax <label> is equal to <name>.
The same box shouldn’t be imported in different ways (i.e. different PATHs), but can be imported different times (with different link names, obviously).
The search directories (i.e. the directories where the boxes are searched) can be shown with the option -s or --show-paths.
Also, you can add new ones with the option -D <directory>. The first search directory is always the folder where is contained the main script.
So, the import statement above, imports box contained in file std/io.sm with
the label io. Actually, there’s no std/io.sm file because the SSL is native (that doesn’t mean non-customizable) but
you can write your own implementation of the SSL and install it in one of the search directories. You can disable the SSL with the option -n or --no-stdlib.
The third line simply uses the box std.io (through its “link” io) by calling its function println with the string Hello, world! as parameter. This function does nothing more than printing its argument and a newline character (\n) to the stdout.
Next, we’ll learn more about statements.
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