The Mun Programming Language

Values and types

Mun is a statically typed language, which helps to detect type-related errors at compile-time. A type error is an invalid operation on a given type, such as an integer divided by a string, trying to access a field that doesn't exist, or calling a function with the wrong number of arguments.

Some languages require a programmer to explicitly annotate syntactic constructs with type information:

int foo = 3 + 4;

However, often variable types can be inferred by their usage. Mun uses type inferencing to determine variable types at compile time. However, you are still forced to explicitly annotate variables in a few locations to ensure a contract between interdependent code.

# pub fn main() {
#   bar(1);
# }
fn bar(a: i32) -> i32 {
    let foo = 3 + a;
    foo
}

Here, the parameter a and the return type must be annotated because it solidifies the signature of the function. The type of foo can be inferred through its usage.

Integer types

An integer is a number without a fractional component. Table 3-1 shows the built-in integer types in Mun. Each variant can be either signed or unsigned and has an explicit size. Signed and unsigned refer to whether it is necessary to have a sign that indicates the possibility for the number to be negative or positive.

Table 2-1: Integer Types in Mun

Signed integer types start with i, unsigned integer types with u, followed by the number of bits that the integer value takes up. Each signed variant can store numbers from -(2^{n - 1}) to 2^{n - 1} - 1 inclusive, where n is the number of bits that variant uses. Unsigned variants can store numbers from 0 to 2^{n - 1}. By default Mun uses 32-bit signed integers.

The size of the isize and usize types depend on the target architecture. On 64-bit architectures,isize and usize types are 64 bits large, whereas on 32-bit architectures they are 32 bits in size.

Floating-Point Types

Real (or floating-point) numbers (i.e. numbers with a fractional component) are represented according to the IEEE-754 standard. The f32 type is a single-precision float of 32 bits, and the f64 type has double precision - requiring 64 bits.

pub fn main() {
    let f = 3.0; // f64
}

The Boolean Type

The bool (or boolean) type has two values, true and false, that are used to evaluate conditions. It takes up one 1 byte (or 8 bits).

pub fn main() {
    let t = true;

    let f: bool = false; // with explicit type annotation
}

Literals

There are three types of literals in Mun: integer, floating-point and boolean literals.

A boolean literal is either true or false.

An integer literal is a number without a decimal separator (.). It can be written as a decimal, hexadecimal, octal or binary value. These are all examples of valid literals:

# pub fn main() {
let a = 367;
let b = 0xbeaf;
let c = 0o76532;
let d = 0b0101011;
# }

A floating-point literal comes in two forms:

• A decimal number followed by a dot which is optionally followed by another decimal literal and an optional exponent.
• A decimal number followed by an exponent.

Examples of valid floating-point literals are:

# pub fn main() {
let a: f64 = 3.1415;
let b: f64 = 3.;
let c: f64 = 314.1592654e-2;
# }

Separators

Both integer and floating-point literals can contain underscores (_) to visually separate numbers from one another. They do not have any semantic significance but can be useful to the eye.

# pub fn main() {
let a: i64 = 1_000_000;
let b: f64 = 1_000.12;
# }

Type suffix

Integer and floating-point literals may be followed by a type suffix to explicitly specify the type of the literal.

Table 2-2: Literal suffixes in Mun

Note that integer literals can have floating-point suffixes. This is not the case the other way around.

# pub fn main() {
let a: u8 = 128_u8;
let b: i128 = 99999999999999999_i128;
let c: f32 = 10_f32; // integer literal with float suffix 
# }

When providing a literal, the compiler will always check if a literal value will fit the type. If not, an error will be emitted:

# pub fn main() {
let a: u8 = 1123123124124_u8; // literal out of range for `u8`
# }

Numeric operations

Mun supports all basic mathematical operations for number types: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and remainder.

pub fn main() {
    // addition 
    let a = 10 + 5;

    // subtraction
    let b = 10 - 4;

    // multiplication
    let c = 5 * 10;

    // division
    let d = 25 / 5;

    // remainder
    let e = 21 % 5;
}

Each expression in these statements uses a mathematical operator and evaluates to a single value. This is valid as long as both sides of the operator have the same type.

Unary operators are also supported:

pub fn main() {
    let a = 4;
    // negate
    let b = -a;
    
    let c = true;
    // not
    let d = !c;
}

Shadowing

Redeclaring a variable by the same name with a let statement is valid and will shadow any previous declaration in the same block. This is often useful if you want to change the type of a variable.

# pub fn main() {
let a: i32 = 3;
let a: f64 = 5.0; 
# }

Use before initialization

All variables in Mun must be initialized before usage. Uninitialized variables can be declared but they must be assigned a value before they can be read.

# pub fn main() {
# let some_conditional = false;
let a: i32;
if some_conditional {
    a = 4;
}
let b = a; // invalid: a is potentially uninitialized
# }

Note that declaring a variable without a value is often a bad code smell since the above could have better been written by returning a value from the if/else block instead of assigning to a. This avoids the use of an uninitialized value.

# pub fn main() {
# let some_conditional = true;
let a: i32 = if some_conditional {
    4
} else {
    5
}
let b = a;
# }