Built-in Functions

Essential¶

print¶

print AnyType;

Prints any valid value without newline.
No curved brackets.

Example

let a = "Hello"
let b = " There"
print a;
print b;
// Output: Hello There

println¶

println AnyType;

Prints any valid value with newline.
No curved brackets.

Example

let a = "Hello"
let b = " There"
println a;
println b;
// Output: Hello
//          There

bai¶

bai AnyType;

Exits Ari prematurely and prints out the given value.
No curved brackets.

Example

1
2
3

let something = 1 / 999;
bai "The program has ended. Nothing to see here."; // Exit program
println "Nothing is impossible"; // This will never print

Random generation ¶

random_choose¶

random_choose(source: Array, number_of_elements: Number) ➟ Array

A uniform distribution is used to randomly select an element from the source.
The number of elements determine the length of the generated array and must be zero or positive.

Example

This example simulates 1000 throws of a fair dice:

1 2	`println random_choose([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], 1000); // 1000 random values // [2, 3, 4, 5, 2, ...]`

random_normal¶

random_normal(mean: Number, standard_deviation: Number, number_of_elements: Number) ➟ Array

A normal distribution is used to generate an array of random values using the mean and standard_deviation.
The number of elements determine the length of the generated array and must be zero or positive.

Example

This example generates 1000 samples with zero mean and a standard deviation of 1:

1 2	`println random_normal(0, 1, 1000); // 1000 random values // [0.3446016, -0.2162096, -0.8018565, 0.60348547, 0.42210117, ...]`

File operations ¶

read_file¶

read_file(file_path: String) ➟ Null

Returns the contents of a file specified by the file path.
If the file does not exist or cannot be read, Null is returned.

Example

This example introduces a simple error-handling pattern in case the file is not found:

let contents = read_file("myfile.txt");
if (contents == null) {
    println "Failed to read file!";
}
else {
    println "Success!";
}

write_file¶

write_file(file_path: String, data: String) ➟ Number

Writes data to a file specified by the file path. If the file does not exist, a new file will be created. Otherwise, the contents of an existing file will be overwritten.
If everything goes as planned, the function will return 1.
If an error occurs during the writing, the function will return 0.

Example

This example introduces a simple error-handling pattern in case the write operation fails:

let result = write_file("myfile.txt", "My passwords are ...");
if (result == 0) {
    println "Failed to write to file!";
}
else {
    println "Success!";
}

Web stuff ¶

serve_static_folder¶

serve_static_folder(folder_path: String, address: String, port: Number) ➟ Nothing

Starts a local web server which serves static files inside the given folder path.
The most convenient address is "localhost" and the port must be a Number.
Similar to how Express.js does it. More info here.
Press Control-C to quit the server.

Example

This example starts a server at localhost:8000

serve_static_folder("public", "localhost", 8000);

// Configured for staging.
//    => address: localhost
//    => port: 8000
//    => log: normal
//    => workers: 16
//    => secret key: generated
//    => limits: forms = 32KiB
//    => keep-alive: 5s
//    => read timeout: 5s
//    => write timeout: 5s
//    => tls: disabled
// Mounting /:
//    => GET / [10]
//    => GET /<path..> [10]
// Rocket has launched from http://localhost:8000

web_get¶

web_get(url: String) ➟ String

Returns the response of a GET request from the given url.
Returns Null if the request fails.

Example

This example sends a GET request to this website and writes the response to a new HTML file:

1 2	`let content = web_get("http://www.blankwebsite.com/"); write_file("blank.html", content);`

web_post¶

web_get(url: String, parameters: Array) ➟ String

Returns the response of a POST request from the given url.
parameters must be an array of Strings). The elements with even-numbered indexes (0, 2, 4, ...) are regarded as keys, whereas elements with odd-numbered indexes (1, 3, 5, ...) are regarded as values.
Returns Null if the request fails.

Example

This example sends a POST request to this website with two parameters and writes the response to a response.txt file:

1 2	`let content = web_post("http://httpbin.org/post", ["key1", "value1", "key2", "value2"]); write_file("response.txt", content);`

The contents of response.txt looks like this:

{
    "args": {}, 
    "data": "{\"key1\":\"value1\",\"key2\":\"value2\"}", 
    "files": {}, 
    "form": {}, 
    "headers": {
        "Accept": "*/*", 
        "Content-Length": "33", 
        "Content-Type": "application/json", 
        "Host": "httpbin.org", 
        "X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-6013ad21-1cf269b238720911742db09c"
    }, 
    "json": {
        "key1": "value1", 
        "key2": "value2"
    }, 
    "origin": "219.95.127.175", 
    "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

Lines 14 and 15 confirms that the website's server received our POST request successfully. ```