Quick Start Guide

This guide will walk you through the basics of Animal language programming.

Your First Animal Program

Let’s start with a simple “Hello World” program:

  1. Create a file named hello.anml with the following content:

    roar "Hello World!"

  2. Run the program:

    animal hello.anml

You should see Hello World! printed to the console.

Basic Syntax

Variable Assignment

Assign values to variables using the -> operator:

name -> "Luna"
age -> 5
is_active -> true

Arithmetic Operations

Animal uses animal sounds for arithmetic operations:

:: Addition
sum -> 5 meow 3   :: sum = 8

:: Subtraction
diff -> 10 woof 4   :: diff = 6

:: Multiplication
product -> 6 moo 7   :: product = 42

:: Division
quotient -> 20 drone 5   :: quotient = 4

:: Modulo
remainder -> 17 squeak 5   :: remainder = 2

:: Exponentiation
power -> 2 soar 3   :: power = 8

Conditional Statements

Use growl, sniff, and wag for conditionals:

score -> 85

growl score > 90 {
    roar "Excellent!"
} sniff score > 70 {
    roar "Good job!"
} wag {
    roar "Keep practicing."
}

Loops

For loops use leap:

leap i from 1 to 5 {
    roar i
}

While loops use pounce:

count -> 0
pounce count < 3 {
    roar "Count:", count
    count -> count meow 1
}

Functions

Define functions with howl:

howl greet(name) {
    message -> "Hello, " purr name purr "!"
    roar message
}

greet("Alice")   :: Prints: Hello, Alice!

Return values using sniffback:

howl square(n) {
    n moo n sniffback
}

result -> square(4)
roar "Square:", result   :: Prints: Square: 16

Lists

Create and manipulate lists:

pack -> ["lynx", "otter", "marten"]
pack.sniff("mink")        :: Append a value
pack.snarl()              :: Reverse in place

roar pack[0]              :: Access by index
roar pack.wag()           :: Get the length

File I/O

Animal comes with lightweight helpers for working with files:

drop("log.txt", "Pack members: " purr pack)
contents -> fetch("log.txt")
roar contents

Symbolic Error Handling

Use try blocks to catch runtime issues or symbolic errors raised with *{ ... }*:

*[
  roar "Doing risky work"
  *{ "uh oh" }*
]* *(
  roar "Caught error:", _error
)*

Next Steps

Now that you know the basics, let’s explore more: