Literals

Integer literals

Viper currently supports only one type of numerical literal - integers. Integers must be typed in base 10(decimal/denary):

• 2
• 55
• 0
  If you require a negative number, use the - unary operator before the literal. Integer literals will always have a type of i32, however the compiler may change this to match the target type.

Character literals

You may use a character literal instead of an integer for readability and simplicity. Unlike integer literals, character literals have a type of i8. Character literals may only contain one character and must be surrounded by single quotes('):

• 'H'
• ' '
• '8'
• '@'

Character literals may also contain escape sequences:

• '\n' - A newline(ASCII code 10)
• '\0' - A null terminator(ASCII code 0)
• '\'' - An escaped single quote, in case of need to store a single quote
• '\"' - An escaped double quote, should be only used in string literals as these can be typed in a character literal

String literals

String literals contain text/a sequence of characters. Like all other literals, they are constant and cannot be assigned to. They can contain 0 or more characters, and will always have a null terminator(\0) at the end. They must be surrounded by double quotes("):

• "Hello"
• "123"
• "@!"

String literals may contain the same escape sequences as character literals. They always have a type of i8*