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3. Basics

These are the basic building blocks of Squiggle programs. All of these things compile directly into normal JavaScript values that can be passed to any other JavaScript function.

Comments

Comments start with # and extend to the end of the line. All text within comments is ignored by Squiggle and not passed on to the generated JavaScript output.

# This is ignored.
# This is also ignored.
# And this.
let console = global.console
let realCode = "potato" # comment 1
# comment 2
console.log(realCode) # comment 3
# final comment

Named literals

true, false, null, and undefined are all the same in Squiggle as they are in JavaScript.

Additionally, global is a named literal that refers to the global context.

Numbers

Numbers are basically the same as JS, with two exceptions: NaN and Infinity are actually considered named numbers, rather than global variables. Also, you can include _ in the middle of your numbers for readability, like: 1_000_000.999.

Strings

Currently only "double-quotes" are supported, no 'single-quotes'.

The supported escape characters are: \n \t \r \" \\. These have the same meaning as in JavaScript.

Strings also support the new ES2015 syntax for specifying Unicode characters:

"\u{CODEPOINT}"

Where CODEPOINT is the Unicode code point of the character you want, like:

"\u{20e}" == "Ȏ"

The text of codepoint is case insensitive, so "\u{20e}" and "\u{20E}" are both legal and represent the same string, "Ȏ".

Arrays

Arrays are slightly different: they are automatically wrapped in a call to Object.freeze. This makes it so no elements in the array can change after it's created. That means no myArray.push(4). JavaScript arrays already have a .concat method for adding elements to a copy of the array.

[]

[1, 2, 3]

[[], []]

[[1, 2, 3], [[1], [2], []]]

["hello", "world"]

Objects

Objects are wrapped in calls to Object.freeze so it's easy to make immutable data. Making new objects with updated properties is done via the ~ operator covered later.

Object keys work like JavaScript in that they can be plain identifiers or string literals, but Squiggle also allows you to compute property names by wrapping them in parentheses.

{}

{a: "b"}

{"hello world": "Hello, world!"}

{key: 400, x: null, y: undefined, o: {}}

{("a" ++ "b"): someStringVariable}

let foo = "potato"
{foo}
# {foo: "potato"}

Functions

Functions in Squiggle automatically have arity checking added. That means that if you call a function with too many or too few arguments, it will throw an error. Functions use fn and don't use braces or return.

fn(x) x + 1
fn(x, y) x + y
fn() Math.floor(Math.random() * 100)

Let's take fn(x, y) x + y as an example and compare that with how you'd express the same thing in JavaScript. It might look a lot like this function:

function(x, y) {
  return x + y;
}

But arity checking means that it's actually more like this JavaScript function:

function(x, y) {
  if (arguments.length !== 2) {
    throw new Error("wrong number of arguments");
  }
  // Main function logic here.
  return x + y;
}

JavaScript's usual relaxed rules around argument count can lead to extremely subtle and hard to detect bugs. It's potentially more flexible the JavaScript way, but much more error-prone.

Sometimes APIs are much simpler if they can have varying parameter counts, so it is still possible to have variadic functions in Squiggle. Using ... in front of your last parameter causes it to collect all of the extra parameters in an array.

def talkAbout(...stuff) do
  stuff.forEach(fn(thing, ...) do
    console.log("I like " .. thing)
  end)
end

talkAbout("cheese", "pickles", "eggs", "coffee")
# logs "I like cheese"
# logs "I like pickles"
# logs "I like eggs"
# logs "I like coffee"

Multi-statement functions

Functions may have multiple statements in them if you use this do/end form with:

let add = fn add(x, y) do
  console.log(x)
  console.log(y)
  x + y
end

Notice how if you're assigning a variable to a named function you have to name it twice. This is redundant, so you should use the form def/end instead:

def add(x, y) do
  console.log(x)
  console.log(y)
  x + y
end

Both of these forms are equivalent and automatically return the value of their last statement. The def/end version is just syntax sugar, but it's the preferred form due to being more concise.

Rest parameters

def foo(first, second, ...rest) do
  second
end

foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
# 2

This function can be called like foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and will return 2. It would fail if called like foo(1) because it needs at least two parameters.

Named this

JavaScript's this is a source of much confusion and pain. In order to help avoid mistakes, functions have to explicitly declare their use of JavaScript's this. It looks like the following:

def getName(@this) do
  this.name
end

let obj = {name: "Violet", getName}

obj.getName()
# "Violet"

If the first parameter starts with @, that variable is assigned the value of this. In this way, you can nest functions and always use the correct this value by giving it the name you want.

def f(@self) do
  fn() self.x
end

f.call({x: 4})()
# 4

def g(@me) do
  fn(@them) [me, them]
end

g.call({a: 1}).call({b: 2})
# [{a: 1}, {b: 2}]

Any variable name can be used for an @ binding.

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