README
1Update scripts (from donut onwards) are written in a new little
2scripting language ("edify") that is superficially somewhat similar to
3the old one ("amend"). This is a brief overview of the new language.
4
5- The entire script is a single expression.
6
7- All expressions are string-valued.
8
9- String literals appear in double quotes. \n, \t, \", and \\ are
10 understood, as are hexadecimal escapes like \x4a.
11
12- String literals consisting of only letters, numbers, colons,
13 underscores, slashes, and periods don't need to be in double quotes.
14
15- The following words are reserved:
16
17 if then else endif
18
19 They have special meaning when unquoted. (In quotes, they are just
20 string literals.)
21
22- When used as a boolean, the empty string is "false" and all other
23 strings are "true".
24
25- All functions are actually macros (in the Lisp sense); the body of
26 the function can control which (if any) of the arguments are
27 evaluated. This means that functions can act as control
28 structures.
29
30- Operators (like "&&" and "||") are just syntactic sugar for builtin
31 functions, so they can act as control structures as well.
32
33- ";" is a binary operator; evaluating it just means to first evaluate
34 the left side, then the right. It can also appear after any
35 expression.
36
37- Comments start with "#" and run to the end of the line.
38
39
40
41Some examples:
42
43- There's no distinction between quoted and unquoted strings; the
44 quotes are only needed if you want characters like whitespace to
45 appear in the string. The following expressions all evaluate to the
46 same string.
47
48 "a b"
49 a + " " + b
50 "a" + " " + "b"
51 "a\x20b"
52 a + "\x20b"
53 concat(a, " ", "b")
54 "concat"(a, " ", "b")
55
56 As shown in the last example, function names are just strings,
57 too. They must be string *literals*, however. This is not legal:
58
59 ("con" + "cat")(a, " ", b) # syntax error!
60
61
62- The ifelse() builtin takes three arguments: it evaluates exactly
63 one of the second and third, depending on whether the first one is
64 true. There is also some syntactic sugar to make expressions that
65 look like if/else statements:
66
67 # these are all equivalent
68 ifelse(something(), "yes", "no")
69 if something() then yes else no endif
70 if something() then "yes" else "no" endif
71
72 The else part is optional.
73
74 if something() then "yes" endif # if something() is false,
75 # evaluates to false
76
77 ifelse(condition(), "", abort()) # abort() only called if
78 # condition() is false
79
80 The last example is equivalent to:
81
82 assert(condition())
83
84
85- The && and || operators can be used similarly; they evaluate their
86 second argument only if it's needed to determine the truth of the
87 expression. Their value is the value of the last-evaluated
88 argument:
89
90 file_exists("/data/system/bad") && delete("/data/system/bad")
91
92 file_exists("/data/system/missing") || create("/data/system/missing")
93
94 get_it() || "xxx" # returns value of get_it() if that value is
95 # true, otherwise returns "xxx"
96
97
98- The purpose of ";" is to simulate imperative statements, of course,
99 but the operator can be used anywhere. Its value is the value of
100 its right side:
101
102 concat(a;b;c, d, e;f) # evaluates to "cdf"
103
104 A more useful example might be something like:
105
106 ifelse(condition(),
107 (first_step(); second_step();), # second ; is optional
108 alternative_procedure())
109