Specification: BQN system-provided values

This portion of the spec is definitely still a draft.

The • symbol is used to access values other than primitives provided by BQN.

Scripts

•Import loads another BQN script. The script is evaluated in its own scope, and its result is either the result of the last line, or a module if it exports with ⇐ at the top level. If it is a module, then it must be destructured immediately unless first-class namespaces are possible.

The right argument is a filename, which may be relative or absolute. Relative paths are taken relative to the source file where this instance of •Import was written. The left argument, if given, is the list of arguments that should be passed through to the file as •args. If no left argument is given then ⟨⟩ is used for •args. However, the behavior is different in this case. The same file will only be loaded once in a given BQN program by •Import calls with no left argument: the first such call saves the returned value, even if it is mutable, and subsequent calls return this saved value. To avoid this and reload the file, pass a left argument of ⟨⟩.

•args is the arguments passed as the file was invoked, either from the command line or •Import. For command line calls it is a list of strings.

•path simply gives the path of the file in which it appears. It includes a trailing slash but not the name of the file itself.

•name gives the name, including the extension, of the file in which it appears.

File access

As with •Import, file paths may be relative or absolute, and relative paths are relative to •path.

Functions •FChars, •FLines, and •FBytes are all ambivalent. If only one argument is given, then it must be the name of a file, and the result is the contents of the file in the appropriate format. If there are two arguments, then the left argument is the filename and the right is the desired contents. These are written to the file, overwriting its contents, and the filename 𝕨 is returned. The three formats are:

• Chars: BQN characters, or UTF-32. The file is assumed to be UTF-8 encoded.
• Lines: BQN strings. The file is decoded as with chars, then split into lines by CR, LR, or CRLF line endings.
• Bytes: Single-byte values, stored as BQN characters from @ to @+255.

Execution and scope manipulation

The effect of •Eval should be the same as if its argument were written as source code in the scope where •Eval appears. It can define variables, and modify those in the current scope or a parent.

Input and output

Operation properties

Each function in this section is monadic.

•Type gives its argument's type, as a number from the table below:

•Glyph gives the glyph corresponding to a primitive as a single character, for example returning '+' given an argument matching +. It causes an error if the argument is not a primitive.

•Source gives a string containing a block's source, including the enclosing braces {}. It causes an error if the argument is not a primitive.

•Decompose breaks down one level of a compound function or modifier, returning a list with a code giving what kind of structure it has (as listed in the table below) followed by each of its components. Non-operations do not cause an error, but return code -1, then the argument as a single component. The result is thus a list of length 2 to 4, and •Decompose cannot cause an error.

Timing