Tin Language Documentation

Tin is a statically typed, compiled systems language with a clean, expression-oriented syntax. It compiles to native code via LLVM.

Table of Contents

Document	Contents
01 - Basics	Types, variables, echo, string interpolation, operators
02 - Control Flow	if/else, for, match, where pattern matching, defer, panic
03 - Functions	Functions, closures, generics, pipe operator, overloading
04 - Collections	Arrays, slices, ranges, destructuring
05 - Structs	Structs, methods, fn init/fn deinit, generics, type aliases, tuples
06 - Traits	Trait declaration, default methods, forward fields, vtable dispatch, generic traits
07 - Enums & Unions	Integer enums, atom enums, tagged unions, native C unions
08 - C Interop	extern, pointers, C struct interop, linker directives (//!)
09 - Packages	use/export, package resolution, standard library overview
10 - Reflection	Atoms, any type, typeof, traitof, fieldnames, getfield, setfield
11 - Testing	test blocks, assert stdlib, tin test command
12 - Macros	Simple macros (AST substitution), CTFE macros, backtick code-splice literals
13 - Control Tags	#pure, #sideffect, #no_recurse, #no_thread, #allow_sideffect
14 - Fibers & Channels	spawn, await, yield, Channel[T], Future[T], async I/O, M:N scheduler

Standard Library

Document	Contents
JSON	JSON encoding/decoding: encode, parse, parse[T], field tags
Regex	PCRE regular expressions: compile, exec, find_all, replace, split

Quick taste

Tin compiles to native code via LLVM. Run a file with tin run file.tin, build a binary with tin build file.tin, and run tests with tin test file.tin (or tin test dir/ to test an entire directory).

// Hello world
echo "Hello, world!"

// Fibonacci with pattern matching
fn fib(n u32) u32 =
  where n <= 1: n
  where _: fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)

echo fib(10)

// Structs with methods
struct person =
  name string
  age  u8

  fn init(this person) =
    echo "new person: {this.name}"

  fn show(this person) string =
    return "{this.name} is {this.age} years old"

let pete = person{name: "Pete", age: 20}
echo pete.show()

// Traits
trait named =
  label string forward
  fn name(this named) string = return this.label

struct cat(named) =
  breed string

let c = cat{label: "Whiskers", breed: "tabby"}
echo c.name()

// Fibers and channels
use sync

fn{#async} worker(id i64, ch sync::Channel[string]) =
  ch.send("result from fiber {id}")

fn main() =
  let ch = sync::Channel[string].make(4)
  spawn worker(1, ch)
  spawn worker(2, ch)
  echo await ch.recv()   // "result from fiber 1" or "2", whichever finishes first
  echo await ch.recv()