Getting Started

RCaron is currently unusable as a shell, a little usable as a scripting language.

Installation

You can install the RCaron shell as a global tool with the following command, requires .NET 7:

dotnet tool install -g RCaron.Shell

dotnet tool install -g RCaron.Shell

You can then run the shell with the rcaron command.

Also see a guide on configuring the shell

Hello World

rcaron
print 'Hello World!'

rcaron
print 'Hello World!'

You can put this code in a file and run it with rcaron <file>, or you can also just start the shell with rcaron and then type the code in.

A bigger example

A simple number guessing game currently looks like this:

rcaron
// we "open" a .NET namespace with open
open 'System'
// to use a .NET type we start it's name with a '#' and then access it's members with ':'
// from there we access the members of a variable, property or whatever with '.'
// variables don't have to be declared
$number = #Random:Shared.Next(1, 10000)
print 'Guess a number between 1 and 10000'
// 'loop' is a loop that can be exited with 'break'
loop {
    #Console:Write('Your guess: ')
    $guess = #Int32:Parse(#Console:ReadLine())
    // 'print' is a built-in function that prints arguments to the console with a space between them
    print 'You guessed:' $guess
    // operators look normal
    if ($guess < $number) {
        print 'Too low'
    }
    else if ($guess > $number) {
        print 'Too high'
    }
    else {
        print 'You guessed it!'
        break
    }
}
print 'congrats'

rcaron
// we "open" a .NET namespace with open
open 'System'
// to use a .NET type we start it's name with a '#' and then access it's members with ':'
// from there we access the members of a variable, property or whatever with '.'
// variables don't have to be declared
$number = #Random:Shared.Next(1, 10000)
print 'Guess a number between 1 and 10000'
// 'loop' is a loop that can be exited with 'break'
loop {
    #Console:Write('Your guess: ')
    $guess = #Int32:Parse(#Console:ReadLine())
    // 'print' is a built-in function that prints arguments to the console with a space between them
    print 'You guessed:' $guess
    // operators look normal
    if ($guess < $number) {
        print 'Too low'
    }
    else if ($guess > $number) {
        print 'Too high'
    }
    else {
        print 'You guessed it!'
        break
    }
}
print 'congrats'

Beware

• The * and / arithmetic operators require a space after them, so 1*2 is invalid, but 1 * 2 is valid. This is because they would end up getting parsed as a path.
• Numbers are parsed as long by default, so 1 / 10 ends up being 0. To get 0.1 you have to write 1.0 / 10.0 or 1 / 10.0 or 1.0 / 10.