Draft:Odin (programming language)

• Comment: of 9 refs 6 are from odin website, and 2 are youtube videos Artem.G (talk) 18:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

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Odin

Paradigms	imperative, procedural
Designed by	Ginger Bill
First appeared	July 7, 2016 (2016-07-07)
Stable release	dev-2023-0x
Typing discipline	Static, strong, inferred, nominal, structural, generic
Platform	x86-64, ARM/ARM64, WebAssembly
OS	Cross-platform
License	3-clause BSD.
Filename extensions	.odin
Website	odin-lang.org
Influenced by
Pascal, C, Go, Oberon-2, Newsqueak, Jai, GLSL

Odin is an imperative, general-purpose, compiled, statically typed, and distinct types using system programming language designed by Ginger Bill

The language supports: compile-time parametric polymorphism, runtime reflection, cross-compilation, manual memory management, array programming, and SOA data types.

Example

package main

import "core:fmt"

main :: proc() {
	program := "+ + * 😃 - /"
	accumulator := 0

	for token in program {
		switch token {
		case '+': accumulator += 1
		case '-': accumulator -= 1
		case '*': accumulator *= 2
		case '/': accumulator /= 2
		case '😃': accumulator *= accumulator
		case: // Ignore everything else
		}
	}

	fmt.printf("The program \"%s\" calculates the value %d\n",
	           program, accumulator)
}

Design

Odin is designed to be an alternative for the C programming language to achieve "high performance" on "modern systems", with features like compile-time parametric polymorphism, array programming, and runtime reflection.

Syntax

Odin's declaration syntax is inspired by Newsqueak and Jai.

// Variable declarations
x : int = 123
x := 123 // Type inference

// Constant value declarations
X :: 123
Y : int : 123

// Function declaration
Z :: proc() {}

Explicit procedure overloading

Odin has procedure overloading, but unlike C++ the overloads have to be specified explicitly.

bool_to_string :: proc(b: bool) -> string {...}
int_to_string  :: proc(i: int)  -> string {...}

// "to_string" is will call either "bool_to_string" or "int_to_string" depending on type.
to_string :: proc{bool_to_string, int_to_string}

Array programming

Odin provides array programming, enabling arithmetics on array elements:

a := [3]f32{ 1, 2, 3 }
b := [3]f32{ 5, 6, 7 }
c := a * b
d := a + b
e := 1 + (c - d) / 2
fmt.printf("%.1f\n", e) // [0.5, 3.0, 6.5]

The language also features "swizzling" of arrays, similar to the operation in shader languages like GLSL.

// Declaring type Vector to be the same as array of 3 f32's.
Vector3 :: [3]f32

// Cross product using swizzle function
cross :: proc(a, b: Vector3) -> Vector3 {
	i := swizzle(a, 1, 2, 0) * swizzle(b, 2, 0, 1)
	j := swizzle(a, 2, 0, 1) * swizzle(b, 1, 2, 0)
	return i - j
}

// Cross product using shorter swizzle notation
cross_shorter :: proc(a, b: Vector3) -> Vector3 {
	i := a.yzx * b.zxy
	j := a.zxy * b.yzx
	return i - j
}

Matrix support

A matrix is a mathematical type built into Odin. It is a regular array of numbers, arranged in rows and columns. Odin's matrix support allows for matrix-array and matrix-matrix operations making it a Level 3 Basic Linear Algebra Subprograming language.

a: matrix[2, 3]f32 // matrix that has 2 rows and 3 columns with an element type of f32
b: matrix[3, 2]f32 // matrix that has 3 rows and 2 columns with an element type of f32
v: [2]f32          // array that has 2 elements with an element type of f32

a = matrix[2, 3]f32{
	1, 9, -13,
	20, 5, -6,
}
b = matrix[3, 2]f32{
	3, 5,
    7, 9,
}
v = [2]f32{2, -4}

m  := a * b // matrix-matrix multiplication
vp := m * v // matrix-array multiplication

The internal representation of a matrix in Odin is stored in column-major format while the matrix literals are written in standard (row-major like) order (e.g. matrix[2, 3]f32 is internally [3][2]f32 (with different a alignment requirement)). Column-major is used in order to utilize (SIMD) vector instructions effectively on modern hardware, if possible.

Comparisons with other languages

The syntax of Odin resembles Go's syntax with many adjustments.

Compared to C, Odin:

• Removes UB from the language
• Removes text-based preprocessing stage
• Introduces strong typing
• Adds array programming and improves runtime reflection
• Has explicit function overloading

Compared to Go, Odin:

• Has manual memory management
• Does not have interfaces

Notable software built with Odin

• EmberGen, a real-time volumetric fluid simulator by JangaFX.

See also

• Pascal
• C
• Go
• Newsqueak
• Array Programming
• Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS)
• SIMD

External links

• Official website
• Odin at Handmade Network

Category:Programming languages Category:Cross-platform free software Category:Cross-platform software Category:Free compilers and interpreters Category:Programming languages created in 2016 Category:Statically typed programming languages Category:Systems programming languages