Variable

Variable is a cell to record value which may be modified at any time. And cell needs a name.

So name should be followed by rules:

start with letter or underscore and the rest part can be number, letter or underscore.

e.g.

_    _name    abc123      //correct
123  123abc   //incorrect

Now, let’s define some variables.

i = 1;
name = 'Mr. M';

In Melang, variable name is only searched in current scope.

So if we define a variable and want to use it in a function, an unexpected result will be occurred.

e.g.

a = 1;
@foo() { //function definition
  @mln_print(a); //output a's value
}
@foo(); //call function foo

The result is:

nil

That is reasonable because interpreter just search a in current scope (in function foo), and it is not defined in this scope.

But if we need a’s value in foo, how to do?

a = 1;
@foo() {
  @mln_print(_a); //_a instead of a
}
@foo();

Result is:

1

So here is the special rule:

If variable name start with _ (underscore), that variable whose name is the part except first underscore will be searched from current scope to outest scope.

Let’s see another example:

a = 1;
b = 2;
@foo() {
  a = 10;
  @mln_print(a); //will output 10
  @mln_print(_a); //also 10
  @mln_print(b); //will output nil
  @mln_print(_b); //will output 2
}