Basics

Getting Started

Installing Nim

Compiling

To compile a nim file in the most basic way (executable will have same name as the part before .nim):

nim c nimFileName.nim

You can automatically execute it after a compile by adding -r:

nim c -r nimFileName.nim

You can add a parameter to set the output folder and binary name:

nim c -o:pathToFolder/programExecutable nimFileName.nim

Indentation

Nim uses indentation similar to Python, it uses two spaces instead of brackets or end like other languages:


if 42 == 42:
echo "42 is equal to 42"

Assigning Variables

Nim is a statically typed programming language, so a type needs to be declared before using the value:


var num: int = 44

Though the value can often be inferred, so it could also be declared this way:


var num = 44

You can also declare many variables at the same time:


var
  num1 = 42
  string1 = "it doesn't have to be the same type"
  char1 = 'c'

Unlike most languages you can use both snake case and camel case, they are interchangeable:


var
  snake_case_variable = "this is the same as snakeCaseVariable"
  camelCaseVariable = "this is the same as camel_case_variable"

If you need to use the same word as a reserved keyword, you can use stropping by adding backticks (`):


var `var` = "this is a stropped variable

Variables cannot begin with a number and cannot contain two consecutive underscores, it can also use Unicode characters.

var

The var type declares a variable that can be changed (it is mutable):


var thisValueCanChange = 4
thisValueCanChange = 5

let

The let type declares a variable that cannot change once it is set (it is immutable), but doesn’t have to be known at compile time:


let thisValueCannotChange = 42

const

The const type declares a variable that cannot change (it is immutable) and is known at compile time:


const thisValueCannotChangeEither = 42

Export Symbol

To allow a variable, procedure, object, etc to be exported to be accessed outside of a module you have to add an *:

var a*: int # this is available outside of the module

Comments

Comments start with a #:

# this is a comment

Multiline comments are started with a #[ and ended with a ]#:

#[
This is a 
multiline comment
on a few lines.
  #[
    These comments
    can also
    be nested!
  ]#
]#

Document comments start with a ## and are used when generating documentation and are only generated if the types/procedures/etc are exported or public, as when using a *.

var number*: int = 44 ## number is used to store a number.

A discard statement can also be used with long string literals """ to create comments:

discard """This is just like
a multiline comment
but with the discard statement"""

Basic Data Types

Integers

Support for binary, octal, hexadecimal numbers comes built-in:


let
  num0: int = 79 # decimal number
  num1: int = 0x4F # hex number
  num2: int = 0b1001111 # binary number
  num3: int = 0o117 # octal number

There is also support for unsigned numbers:


let num0: uint = 79 # unsigned number

Numbers can be explicitly assigned a size by adding it after int or uint (8, 16, 32, 64):


let
  num8bit: int8 = -79
  num8bitunsigned: uint8 = 79

You can also use underscores to improve readability of numbers, Nim ignores them:

let 
  numWithUnderscores = 1_000_000
  numWithoutUnderscores = 1000000
echo numWithUnderscores == numWithoutUnderscores # prints true

Floats

The fastest type for floats is float:


let floatNum: float = 42.0

Floats have two different suffixes based on their size and is preceded with a apostrophe (') and the size ( 'f32 for float32 and 'f64 for float64):


let
  floatNum32: float = 44'f32
  floatNum64: float = 44'f64

Characters

The char type is for representing a single ASCII character and is wrapped with two single apostrophes ('):


let
  zed: char = 'z'
  two: char = '2'
  pound: char = '#'

Special Characters

\n is a newline character
\t is a tab character
\\ is a backslash (since the first \ is an escape character)
r"..." is for raw strings to output an exact string ignoring special characters in the quotes


echo "This has a newline at the end.\n"
echo "This has a \t tab in the sentence."
echo "This has a \\ backslash in the sentence."
echo r"This has\n no special characters\n at all."

Strings

Strings are best explained as a series of characters and is wrapped around two double quotes ("), these are all valid:


let
  a: string = "cool"
  b: string = "This is an example sentence."
  c: string = ""
  d: string = "42"
  e: string = "@"

Booleans

A boolean type can only have two values, true or false.


let
  trueVariable: bool = true
  falseVariable: bool = false

Basic Operations

Arithmetic

The following math operators are in Nim: +, -, *, and /.

The / operator will always give a floating point number as a result even if no remainders exist:


10/5 # results in 2.0

In a similar manner, when doing any arithmetic with floating point numbers, a float will result even if no remainders or decimals result:


4.25 - 2.25 # results in 2.0
2.0/2.0 # results in 1.0

The precedence of math operation is as expected, with multiplying and dividing having a higher priority than addition/subtraction.

Integer division is possible by using div operator to discard the remainder:


5 div 4 # results in 1

To get the remainder only, the modulus operator, mod can be used:


10 mod 4 # results in 2

These two operators will always result in integers.

Comparison

Nim provides <,>, ==, != boolean operators. These support numbers, characters, and strings:


5 < 4 # false
5 == 5 # true
4.4 < 55.5 # true
'c' < 'd' # true
'c' != 'c' # false
"first" < "second" # true

Character/String comparison rules:

All uppercase letters come before lowercase letters.
When comparing strings, it is char-by-char, the letters that come first are smaller than characters later in the alphabet.
A shorter string is considered smaller than a longer one.

There are also logical operators and, or, xor, and not.

The and operator returns true only if both members are true.
The or operator returns true if at least one member is true.
The xor operator returns true if one member is true, but the other is not.
The not operator negates the boolean value to the opposite value and only takes one argument.


true and true # is true
true and false # is false
false and false # is false

true or true # is true
true or false # is true
false or false # is false

true xor true # is false
true xor false # is true
false xor false # is false

not true # is false
not false # is true

String Concatenation

As long as you use var to define the string, we can use add to add another string to the string variable:


var a = "test strings are "
a.add("for testing")
echo a # outputs "test strings are for testing"

We can also combine the two to echo to the screen using two ways:


var a = "test strings are "
echo a & "for testing" # outputs "test strings are for testing"
echo a, "for testing" # outputs "test strings are for testing"

We also can use & to combine strings into a variable declaration:


var 
  a = "test strings are "
  b = "for testing"
  c = a & b
  d = a, b # this won't compile

Type Conversion

Adding a $ to a variable name makes it into a string:


var 
  number: int = 44
  itsAString: string = $number

Convert a float to an int (it does not round the number, but just drops any decimals):


let a = 4.0
echo int(a)

Convert an int to a float:


let b = 4
echo float(b)