Language Reference: Miscellaneous

• statements expressions

• newline statements

• semicolons

• identifiers

• statement blocks

• whitespace

• name syntax

• comments

• camel case

• no newline index field call

• primitives

• precedence

• operators

• pow parens

• parens

• associativity

side effects (like printing a value, setting a variable, or returning from a function)

In Language Constructs

There are several situations in which language constructs will produce none values, including:

• Evaluating an if or match expression with no matching branch and no else branch.

• Calling a function, evaluating a conditional branch, or importing a script which contains no code, or whose final statement is not an expression.

• Evaluating an if or match expression with no matching branch and no else branch.

  n = 7
  
  if n % 2 == 0 then
    "even"
  end
  
  match n % 2
    case 0 then "even"
  end

  none
  none
  

• Calling a function, evaluating a conditional branch, or importing a script which contains no code.

  fn nada()
  end
  
  nada()
  
  if true then
  end

  none
  none
  

• Calling a function, evaluating a conditional branch, or importing a script whose final statement is a variable assignment or a loop.

  fn justChecking()
    for n in span(1, 10) do
      assert(n > 0)
    end
  end
  
  justChecking()
  
  if true then
    n = 100
  end

  none
  none
  

Identifier Names

An identifier in Pointless is a name that starts with an ASCII letter [a-zA-Z] and is followed by zero or more ASCII letters or digits [a-zA-Z0-9]. Variable names must be valid identifiers, and must not be [keywords].

Valid identifier examples:

nickname
highScore
player2

Invalid identifier examples:

nick$nam€
high_score
2player