Variable Expansions

Expansions provide dynamic string generation capabilities. These work identical to the standard POSIX way, but there are a few major differences: arrays are denoted with an @ sigil, and have their own variant of process expansions (@()) which splits outputs by whitespace; and our arithmetic logic is destined to be both more feature-complete, supports floating-point math, and handles larger numbers.

String Variables

Like POSIX shells, the $ sigil denotes that the following expression will be a string expansion. If the character that follows is an accepted Unicode character, all characters that follow will be collected until either a non-accepted Unicode character is found, or all characters have been read. Then the characters that were collected will be used as the name of the string variable to substitute with.

let string = "example string"
echo $string
echo $string:$string

example string
example string:example string

NOTE:

• Accepted characters are unicode alphanumeric characters and _.

Array Variables

Unlike POSIX, Ion also offers support for first class arrays, which are denoted with the @ sigil. The rules for these are identical, but instead of returning a single string, it will return an array of strings. This means that it's possible to use an array variable as arguments in a command, as each element in the array will be treated as a separate shell word.

let array = [one two three]
echo @array

one two three

However, do note that double-quoted arrays are coerced into strings, with spaces separating each element. It is equivalent to using the $join(array) method. Containing multiple arrays within double quotes is therefore equivalent to folding the elements into a single string.

Braced Variables

Braces can also be used when you need to integrate a variable expansion along accepted Unicode characters.

let hello = "hello123"
echo ${hello}world
let hello = [hello 123 ' ']
echo @{hello}world

hello123world
hello 123  world

Aliases

Ion also supports aliasing commands, which can be defined using the alias builtin. Aliases are often used as shortcuts to repetitive command invocations.

alias ls = "ls --color"
#echo $ls #ion: expansion error: Variable does not exist
#aliase are stored separately