[protomyth]

Here the example on the site:

  func main(): int {
      mut i := 0;

      for i < 5 {
          printf("i: %d\n", i);
          i = i + 1;
      }

      return 0;
  }

I'm really curious about 2 things: that for seems to really be a while. Why := in the declare and = in the assignment?

[notduncansmith]

Perhaps the author was inspired by the Go language, as those are both Go-isms: Go's only loop is a for loop, and := tells the compiler to infer the variable type when initializing.

In fact, this snippet is only a few deviations away from being valid Go code.

[AYBABTME]

Their compiler is written in Go.

See https://github.com/ark-lang/ark

[warmwaffles]

You also need to remember that at one point Go's compiler was written in C, as with rust. It's all apart of the language evolution.

[AYBABTME]

I'm not blaming them, just saying there's evidence the authors are quite familiar with Go. =P

[michaelmior]

:= isn't really stating to infer the type (although this happens) but a way to differentiate variable initialization with assignment. When using := the variable is created while = is just a regular assignment. Having these as separate operators prevents errors like this:

    foo := 3
    fooo = 4

The second line is invalid because fooo does not exist.

[fapjacks]

Indeed it is written in Go, after all.

[felixangell]

Hi, for is basically a while loop yes. We haven't implemented ranges yet, so this is the example we chose since it works, and it's fairly concise to fit on the website.

I chose `:=` and `=` mostly because of personal preference.