Lexical elements

Comments

Single line comments are C++ style. They begin with // and end with the end of line.

Multi-line comments are C style. They begin with /* and end with */. Comment nesting is supported.

Declaration Comments

A special comment syntax allows to write comments for declarations (functions, activities, types, variables, …) which will be transported over to the generated C code. This allows to document the API and make this documentation available to the C programmer who integrates generated code in a larger scope.

There are two supported styles of declaration comments. Java style multi-line comments /** */ and .Net style single line comments ///.

Note that using declaration comments before something that is not a declaration, e.g. an assignment, is a syntax error.

Built-in Operators and Separators

Keywords

abort activity and as await bits8 bits16 bits32 bits64 blech bool cobegin const do else elseif end exposes extern false float32 float64 function if import int8 int16 int32 int64 internal let module nat8 nat16 nat32 nat64 not or param prev repeat run reset return returns signature singleton struct then true type until var weak when while with

Additionally, the current compiler implementation reserves keywords for concepts that were designed into the language but not yet implemented. Reserved keywords include: assert assume default emit enum error extension in next of past print ref shares signal suspend throw throws try typealias unit

Identifiers

An identifier is any token that is not a keyword and starts with a letter or underscore and continues with an arbitrary number of letters, digits or underscores. The precise definition is given by the following grammar rule

Identifier ::=  "_"* ("a"..."z" | "A"..."Z")+ ("_" | "a"..."z" | "A"..."Z" | "0"..."9")*

Note that identifiers have an infix of at least one letter.

Wildcard

Additionally we reserve a token that consists of underscores only. We call this the “wildcard”. Wildcards are useful when you want to discard the result of a computation without declaring a dummy variable.

_ = f()

In this example you cannot just call f like in C because the Blech compiler will complain that f is declared to return a value but there is no location to store this value in. The wildcard makes the intention to discard the returned value explicit.

Literals

BoolLiteral ::= "true" | "false"

Digit        ::= "0"..."9"
NonZeroDigit ::= "1"..."9"

BinInteger ::= "0b" ( ["_"] ( "0" | "1" ) )+
OctInteger ::= "0o" ( ["_"] "0"..."7" )+
HexInteger ::= "0x" ( ["_"] (Digit | "a"..."f" | "A"..."F") )+  
DecInteger ::= NonZeroDigit (["_"] Digit)* | "0" (["_"] "0")*

Integer ::= DecInteger | BinInteger | OctInteger | HexInteger

FloatNumber   ::=  PointFloat | ExponentFloat
PointFloat    ::=  [DigitPart] Fraction | DigitPart "."
DigitPart     ::=  Digit (["_"] Digit)*
Fraction      ::=  "." DigitPart
ExponentFloat ::=  (DigitPart | PointFloat) exponent
Exponent      ::=  ("e" | "E") ["+" | "-"] DigitPart