Constants

Constants, here, means the (sets of) well-known values. Most of them are results indicating some state.

Booleans

The two booleans are #t for “true” and #f for “false.”

In Idio, only #f is tested for in conditional expressions which means that, in practice, any other value is equivalent to #t. This may sound odd but turns out to be very useful.

#t, itself, may seem a bit redundant, then, but it exists as the nominal not-#f value for expressions to return where something not-#f is required.

Unlike many programming languages, Idio does not associate 0 (zero) or "" (the empty string) with falsehood. They are perfectly legitimate values and not false/invalid in any way.

Null

#n is the common “null” value. It is primarily used as a sentinel value, notably marking the end of a proper list.

You can test if a value is #n with the null? predicate.

Result Values

Everything returns a value even when there is no obvious value to return. Hence there are several values returned from expressions which are indicative but limited utility. There are also some pseudo-error values.

  • #<unspec> is returned when there is no otherwise useful value to return

  • #<void> is returned when no computation has taken place, notably, when a conditional expression has no fallback “else” clause.

    You can test for this value with the void? predicate.

  • #<eof> is returned by reading functions when the end of a handle is reached

    You can test for this value with the eof? predicate.

These printed formats are of the form #<...> where we might get something intelligible to humans in between the angle brackets. These are invalid reader forms which allow users to glean something useful about an internal value when they print one out but not be able to reconstruct the same thing by somehow feeding it back into Idio.

This printed form is very common for compound objects.

Last built at 2024-12-21T07:11:29Z+0000 from 77077af (dev) for Idio 0.3