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Read Eval Print Loop (REPL)

rascal-0.40.17

Synopsis​

The Rascal Read Eval Print Loop (REPL)

Description​

The Rascal shell is an interactive console to experiment with Rascal code. You can write your own expressions, statements and declarations right there. Or, you can import library modules and try out their functionality.

Examples​

Rascal code can be a trivial expression

rascal>1+2
int: 3

Or a more complex list comprehension:

rascal>[ n * n | int n <- [0..10] ]
list[int]: [0,1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81]

Or importing a module and using a function declared in it:

rascal>import List;
ok
rascal>size([ n * n | int n <- [0..10] ])
int: 10

Another use is to declare variables

rascal>int x = 2;
int: 2
rascal>int y = 3;
int: 3

and use them later on:

rascal>x * y
int: 6

Pitfalls​

  • Rascal is quite demanding as far as the proper placement of semicolons (;) is concerned.
  • Rascal is a statically typed language but we have not released the type checker yet. Sometimes this is confusing because the interpreter will try to run otherwise broken code and produce an error message.