Introduction

Dawn (dwn) is a new programming language designed to be simple, fast, and powerful. It is currently under development, but contains features available in most programming languages:

• Variable creation
• Operators
• Loops
• If blocks
• Custom Functions (without arguments)

This guide is intended to help you get started with Dawn.

License

The dwn source and documentation are release are released under the GNU GPL v3 license.

Getting Started

Let's start your Dawn journey! There's a lot to learn; in this chapter, we will learn to:

• Install the Dawn (dwn) executable
• Create a simple Hello, world! program and run it.

Note: Replace <path to dawn program directory> with the location where you want to store your Dawn (dwn) program file. Also replace <path to executable> with the location of the Dawn (dwn) executable

Installation

There are multiple ways to install the dwn CLI tool. Choose any one of the methods below that best suit your needs.

Pre-compiled binaries

Executable binaries are available for download on the GitHub Releases page. Download the binary for your platform (Windows, macOS, or Linux). Locate the binary and do the following:

MacOS and Linux

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin # Enter your password if it asks for it.
sudo mv <path to executable> /usr/local/bin
dwn --help 

Windows

(CMD)

mkdir "C:\Program Files\Dawn"
move <path to executable> "C:\Program Files\Dawn\"
dwn.exe --help

(PowerShell)

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path "C:\Program Files\Dawn" -Force
Move-Item –Path <path to executable> -Destination "C:\Program Files\Dawn\"
& "dwn.exe" "--help"

Hello, World!

Now that you have installed Dawn (dwn), it is time to write your first Dawn program! It is traditional when learning a new programming language to write a little program that prints the text Hello, world! to the screen, so we’ll do the same here!

Creating the project file

You may use any IDE, text editor or command line to create your first Dawn program. Dawn program files end with the extension .dwn.

If you are using command line, create an empty Dawn program file with:

MacOS and Linux

cd <path to dawn program directory>
touch code.dwn

Windows

(CMD)

cd <path to dawn program directory>
copy NUL code.dwn

(PowerShell)

Set-Location -Path <path to dawn program directory>
New-Item code.dwn -type file

Adding the content

Open the file and add the following text:

say "Hello, world!"

Then, open a command prompt or terminal and run the following:

MacOS and Linux

dwn run code.dwn

Windows

(CMD)

dwn.exe run code.dwn

(PowerShell)

& "dwn.exe" "run" "code.dwn"

Result

You should get:

Hello, world!

Variables

In Dawn, variables are created like this:

let a = "Hello"

where a is the variable name and "Hello" is the value.

Data Types

There are 4 data types in Dawn:

NOTE: ints take up less memory that floats and thus are more efficient.