Attention

PotatoOS is currently in early alpha and is not available for download. Features and APIs documented here are subject to change.

Operators

Arithmetic Operators

STARCH supports the standard arithmetic operators:

var sum = 5 + 3;        # Addition
var diff = 10 - 2;      # Subtraction
var product = 4 * 7;    # Multiplication
var quotient = 20 / 4;  # Division
var power = 2 ^ 8;      # Exponentation
var remainder = 10 % 3; # Modulo

Comparison Operators

var is_equal = (5 == 5);      # Equal to
var not_equal = (3 != 4);     # Not equal to
var less = (2 < 5);           # Less than
var greater = (10 > 3);       # Greater than
var less_eq = (5 <= 5);       # Less than or equal
var greater_eq = (7 >= 2);    # Greater than or equal

In addition to these standard comparison operators, STARCH also supports the approximately equal operator.

var approx = (50 ≈ 54); # This is true

For strings, the comparison is case insensitive. For numbers, the answer is true if the numbers are within 10% of each other.

Logical Operators

STARCH has all the traditional boolean operators:

var _and = true and true; # AND
var _or = true or false   # OR
var _not = not false      # NOT

Pipeline Operator

The pipeline operator (~>) is STARCH’s signature feature. It passes the result of the left-hand expression as the first argument to the right-hand function:

/* Traditional function nesting
This IS still supported */
print(process(get_data("hello")));

// Pipeline style
"hello" ~> get_data() ~> process ~> print;

This enables fluid, readable data transformation. You can also use it with members:

var text: str = "   Hello world   ";

// Traditional
print(text.trim().upper().replace(" ", "_"));

// Pipeline
text ~> .trim() ~> .upper() ~> .replace(" ", "_") ~> print();
// You can also use tabs for readability
text
    ~> .trim()
    ~> .upper()
    ~> .replace(" ", "_")
    ~> print();

Range Operator

The range operator (..) is used to generate numerical lists.

/* Output:
1 2 3 4 5 */
for i in [1..5] {
    print(i);
}

/* Output:
2 4 6 8 10 */
for i in [2..10..2] { # Step of 2
    print(i);
}

Concatenation

Use ~ to concatenate strings:

var greeting = "Hello" ~ ", " ~ "World!";
print(greeting);  # "Hello, World!"

Assignment Operators

var x = 10;
x += 5;   # x = x + 5
x -= 3;   # x = x - 3
x *= 2;   # x = x * 2
x /= 4;   # x = x / 4