Question about variable affectation

[batiste]

Hi,

As I new comer here is my first reaction to the syntax:

counter: int = 0;

Oki fair enough. It seems that a colon is used to define new variables... Oki I think I get it.

counter := 0;

Wait a minute, now the colon seems to be part of ":=" pair... What does this mean. It seem colon as a contextual meaning. Is counter: = 0; equivalent? This is confusing.

counter: int;

Yet another syntax to remember.

Do we really need a colon here? Is it to express a new variable declaration or assign a type explicitly? I think the use of it in this first example is confusing... Can't we just remove it entirely?

Just saying that having a confusing syntax as a first example is off putting.

[refi64]

The := is just to represent that the type is inferred. Like a: auto = b;.

a: int and a: int = 0 are the same, but the latter initializes it with a default value. Like int a vs int a = 0.

[BSVino]

What Ryan (kirbyfan64) said is true. Here's another attempt at explanation.

The name of the variable always comes first. The colon denotes the type of the variable, and the = denotes an assignment to a value. So, name : type = value;. Sometimes the type can be inferred from the assignment, and in those cases the type is omitted and it looks like name := value;. Like Ryan said, that would be the same as name : auto = value; If you don't want to assign a particular value, you can omit the assignment: name : type;. I think Jai will still initialize it to 0 in that case though, and you have to do something like name : type = ---; to avoid initialization at all.

[TheLoneWolfling]

The current readme doesn't sell ':=' for me at all.

It seems to map essentially 1:1 with the existing C++ approach.

a := b -> 'auto a = b a : t->t a`

...so what are the advantages?

I like the explicit uninitialized value... but that could be a simple extension to the C++ approach.

It seems to me that this is trying to mimic a more functional style... but that is weird for a language that's supposedly C-style.