Temporary Hacks
Pinecone is still under rapid development, and there are a lot of features that are not yet implemented. This tutorial explains what is coming and what you can use until then. many of the functions described here may be depricated/removed as soon as better replacements are ready.
Pass-by-reference
There is not yet any pass-by-reference in Pinecone (with the exception of Int arrays and strings (though the latter is immutable)). Without pass-by-reference, you can’t really have classes because functions can not modify the object they are called on.
Arrays
I have some very cool ideas for array syntax, but it is not ready yet. For now, you can have an array of ints with the built in class IntArray. Here is an example of how to use it:
myArray: IntArray: 6 # 6 is the length of the array
i: 0 | i<myArray.size | i: i+1 @
(
myArray.set: i, i*2+1 # set index i to value i*2+1
)
print: myArray.get: 2 # get the element at index 2
The output is 5.
Strings and Text
As of v0.3.0, strings work and the printc function is deprecated. It will be removed soon.
Input
Getting string input works great (see string tutorial). Int input is not yet standardized, but you can call the function inputInt to get a number from the user.
imports
Importing works similar to how it does in Python. It simply dumps another file into your current file. Right now, the import syntx is
==> "path/to/target/file/from/current/file.pn"
I may keep this syntax, but I’m not sure so I’m keeping it in this tutorial.
Linking with C++
A highly suggested feature has been the ability to integrate Pinecone into C++ projects. There are a number of ways to do this with different trade offs, and hopefully there will be a complete solution at some point. In the mean time, there is a way to use 3rd party libraries with Pinecone via two functions, cppCode and cppHead. To use these you must transpile instead of interpret. cppCode lets you drop C++ source code directly into the transpiler output. cppHead is the same except it adds its code to the top of the source file (outside any function). It is useful for includes. Here is an example:
cppHead: "#include <iostream>"
cppHead: "using std::cout;"
cppHead: "using std::endl;"
a: 9
cppCode: "cout << a << endl;"
cppCode: "a = 2;"
print: a
When you transpile and run this, the output produced is
9
2
You can not get a return value from cppCode, nore can you declare a variable within it that is usable elsewhere. To get data out, you must create a variable of the correct type beforehand and set that variable within the C++ code. There is no way to call Pinecone functions from C++ code. Don’t try to fine a workaround, it won’t work. If you want to link with 3rd party libraries, you must transpile to a .cpp file and do the linking and compiling yourself.
Command Line Arguments
Use argLen to get the number of arguments and arg: argIndex to get the string value of one. For example, here is a simple program to list all arguments:
print: "there are " + argLen.String + " args."
i: 0 | i < argLen | i: i + 1 @ (
print: arg: i
)
To send args into a program, run the program with the -r or -e flag after the Pinecone source file name. All arguments after that will be sent in. The Pinecone source filepath will be the first arg. You can also compile the program and pass args in normally when running it without Pinecone.