Introduction

This chapter will introduce Roto and guide you towards being able to write your own scripts with it. This is not meant to be a comprehensive reference. If you want to know everything that Roto has to offer, look at the Language Reference, instead.

While you’re learning the language, there are two pages you might want to keep open as a reference, so you can look up anything you don’t understand:

• Syntax Overview

• Language Reference

The easiest way to follow along is to install the standalone compiler and run the examples locally. You can run a script with the following command:

Console

$ roto run path-to-script.roto

When a Roto script is run, it is first compiled, and any syntax or type checking errors will be reported. Then the function called main will be called. The minimal script you need is therefore the following:

Roto

fn main() {
    // your code goes here
}

Every statement you write in Roto must end with a semicolon. You can add comments to your code with //, which will make Roto ignore the rest of the line.

Let’s get started!