Hello World

In this part I am going to explain a basic script. If you already have some experience with programming and that you understand what the code below does, you can probably skip this part.

Hello World!

ManiaScript uses a C-like syntax: there are code blocks delimited by curly braces {} , that contain several instructions, ending with a semicolon ;.

Text Hello() {
    return "Hello World!";
}

main() {
    declare Text Nothing;
    declare Sentence = Hello();
    log(Sentence);
}

This script prints "Hello World!" to the console output. Let's try to understand the script bit by bit.

In ManiaScript, every script starts with a main function, it means that the code within the main function is executed first. Let's start by reading the first line of the main function.

declare Text Nothing;

The first line declares a new variable. A variable is used to hold some data. It starts with a declare keyword, then the type and the name of the variable are indicated. We have not set any value for the variable named Nothing, consequently its value is an empty text.

declare Sentence = Hello();

This line is similar to the first one, we declare a new variable named Sentence and assign it a value with the equal sign =. The value of Sentence is Hello(). Did you notice the two parenthesis after Hello? They are here because Hello() is a function call, so we need to read the function named Hello to know the value of Sentence.

Text Hello() {
    return "Hello World!";
}

Here is the code for the function Hello. This code is written above the main function because we call it from main and the ManiaScript compiler reads a file from the top to the bottom. A function declaration begins with a type that indicates what kind of value it returns. It is followed by the name of the function. You can declare variables and call functions in the body of the function declaration, but you have to return a value with the return keyword. This function is named Hello, returns a value of type Text which is "Hello World!".

In the declaration of the variable Sentence, no type was specified. That's because when you assign a value to a variable in the same line as the declaration, the compiler can guess the type of that value.

log(Sentence);

And finally the last line of the script! Did you notice the two parenthesis again? This line is also a function call. log is a function that takes one argument and print it to the output console. Here it prints the value of Sentence, so "Hello World!" is printed.

In this example our function named Hello did not take any arguments, but it is possible to do so. Here is an example of another function named Hello that takes a name as argument:

Text Hello(Text _Name) {
    return "Hello" ^ _Name ^ "!";
}

Note that there is only one argument in the code above, but your functions can have as many arguments as you want, just separe them with a comma. In ManiaScript, the operator ^ concatenates strings together. So if you call the function like this:

log(Hello("you"));

It will print "Hello you!" to the console.