Declaration and assignment

A synolon is a logos slot and a hyle slot, and declarations are immutable by default. Three operators write those slots.

The colon writes the logos slot; the other two write the hyle slot. They do not compose: a : i32 = 5 is rejected. A name declared with a logos takes its value by later reassignment.

a : i32
a = 7
a           # 7

= is reassignment, not declaration. It is an error on a name that was never declared, so a mistyped cont = 6 is caught rather than silently bound.

Juxtaposition

An anonymous value with its logos is written by juxtaposition, the logos preceding the hyle: i32 32, f64 2.0. There is no logos = value form.

The two declaration operators differ in what they accept. : requires its operand to be a logos, since that is what a logos slot holds. := accepts any synolon at all, a logos included, because a logos is a value like any other:

x := i32    # binds the name to the logos itself
y := x 5    # so x is another spelling of i32
y           # 5

, is the one explicit separator

Expressions are self-delimiting: a cluster detaches the moment precedence guarantees it will consume no more tokens, and that is also what ends each expression. Newlines are ordinary whitespace and ; does not exist.

Separation is required only where adjacency would otherwise read as consumption, which is where a logos sits before a value it must not take:

f := fn (a : i32, b : i32) -> i32 ( a + b )
f(i32 3, 4)   # 7: one anonymous i32 value, then a literal

f(i32 3) would instead be a single argument, juxtaposition having consumed the 3. The same , separates fields, arguments, and expressions, and may also be written where nothing is ambiguous, purely for the reader.

Comments are graph structure

# is an ordinary identity that consumes either the rest of the line or a following «…» string, and builds a reflectable comment node interleaved with the code it annotates. Documentation is extracted by graph query rather than by scraping syntax. A comment node is void-valued and invisible to value flow, so a trailing # done never becomes a scope's value.

x := i32 1  # trailing prose, and x is still the value
x           # 1

mut is a logos modifier

Specified, not in this release. The seed has no mut; every declaration is immutable and reassignment writes the hyle directly. See what this release runs.

Mutability is something the logos states about the value, not a qualifier in value position: mut T is the logos of a mutable T, the very same mut as in &mut T. mut left-prefixes a logos at any level of the classifier tower and makes the level just below it mutable, so the two slots are independent permissions and a value construction spells out four states:

i32 32                # frozen logos, frozen hyle    : a plain constant
mut i32 32            # frozen logos, mutable hyle   : an ordinary variable
mut logos i32 32      # mutable logos, frozen hyle   : reinterpret-only
mut logos mut i32 32  # both                         : full structural mutability

A mutable logos does not imply a mutable hyle; reinterpret-only is its own quadrant. Both slots follow one lifecycle, undefined to defined to frozen, and the flip to frozen is one-way.