Fundamentals: Literals #

Ara supports the following literals:

• bool
• int
• float
• string
• null

Boolean literals #

A boolean literal is either true or false.

$a = true;
$b = false;

Integer literals #

An integer literal is a sequence of digits.

$a = 1234; // decimal number
$b = -123; // a negative number
$c = 0123; // octal number
$d = 0x1A; // hexadecimal number
$e = 0b11111111; // binary number

An integer literal may contain _ separators between digits, which are ignored by the compiler.

$a = 1_000_000; // same as 1000000

Floating-point literals #

A floating-point literal is a sequence of digits, optionally followed by a decimal point, and optionally followed by an exponent.

$a = 1.234;
$b = 1.2e3;
$c = 7E-10;

A floating-point literal may contain _ separators between digits, which are ignored by the compiler.

$a = 1_000_000.000_001; // same as 1000000.000001

String literals #

Single Quotes #

A string literal enclosed in single quotes is a sequence of characters surrounded by single quotes.

$a = 'Hello, World!';

Double Quotes #

A string literal enclosed in double quotes is a sequence of characters surrounded by double quotes.

$a = "Hello, World!";

certain characters can also be expressed as escape sequences. An escape sequence represents a single-character encoding. For example:

$a = "First line \nSecond line";

The following escape sequences are supported:

Null literal #

The null literal is the only value of the null type.

$a = null;