Built-in Types
The built-in types for Alan are included in the root scope and never need to be explicitly defined. Built-in types divide into three categories: basic types, strings, and special types.
Basic Types
voidint8int16int32int64orintfloat32float64orfloatbool
Basic types include integers (int8, int16, int32, and int64), floating point numbers (float32 and float64), booleans (bool), and the void (no value) type. The numbers refer to the number of bits consumed by the basic type. There are currently no unsigned variants of the integer types, though that may change if there is demand for it.
The int64 and float64 types are special among the numeric types, as these are the types that any numeric constant will be represented as, depending on whether or not it has a decimal. They have been given aliases of int and float respectively for that reason.
The four "main" basic types (int64, float64, bool and void) have constant representations that you can easily type. The non-64-bit numeric types are considered specialized types and are discouraged (the runtime does not take advantage of the potential space optimizations they provide to keep the internal memory addressing system simpler), so constants for those types must be explicitly casted using the to<Type> functions discussed in the Type Coercion section.
The integers have basic base-10 integer form as well as hexadecimal form. Binary and Octal forms are not implemented but that may change if there is demand for it.
const base10 = 12345;
const base16 = 0xabcde;
The floating point numbers have only basic base-10 with a decimal point form, no scientific notation form yet, but that may change if there is demand for it.
const floating = 1.2345;
Booleans are represented by the keywords true and false. void has no representation beyond void. It can't be assigned to, and is meant to represent functions that return nothing.
const boolean = true;
const someVoid = void;
The basic types are included in the root scope and never need to be explicitly defined, they always exist.
Strings
Strings (string) are a bit beyond the basic type. From the perspective of the user of Alan they are utf-8 byte arrays (multi-byte code points increase the string length by 2 or 3, not 1). If there is significant demand for it, string length checks and other operations will be switched to the codepoint model versus the byte array model.
Strings are defined by wrapping double or single quotes (" or ') around text. They work identically to Javascript strings, with the same sorts of C-style escape codes. Within the runtime, however, they are represented as Pascal strings with a 64-bit header, which makes certain operations faster than their C-string counterparts (particularly length checking, which is O(1)) but means 8 extra bytes are required for each string versus C-string's traditional 1 extra byte, so lots of small strings will consume more memory.
const myString = "My string's string";
const myOtherString = 'My other string\'s string';
Special Types
functionErrorMaybe<T>Result<T>Either<T, U>Array<V>HashMap<K, V>KeyVal<K, V>
Functions are covered in the Functions section. Either<T, U> is a special type that can hold two values. Other special types are built on top of it. Maybe<T> is equivalent to Either<T, void> and Result<T> is equivalent to Either<T, Error>. Error and Result are more extensively covered in the Error Handling section.
A HashMap<K, V> creates a mapping from K to V. An Array<V> in Alan can hold more than one V at a time. Arrays can be defined with an explicit type or the compiler can infer the type for you:
const test = new Array<int> [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ];
const count = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
The sections that cover built-in functions for Array Manipulation and HashMap Manipulation provide a better sense of how to manipulate the values stored in Array<V>, HashMap<K, V> and KeyVal<K, V>.