Operators

Tolk provides standard operators for integers and booleans.

Operator priority

From highest to lowest.

Parenthesis ( )

Groups expressions: (1 + 2) * 3; or creates tensors: pair = (1, 2).

Square brackets [ ]

Creates typed tuples: [1, 2].

Operator lazy

With lazy loading the compiler loads only the accessed fields and skips the rest.

Non-null assertion operator !

Skips the nullability check: someVar!.

Unary operators ! ~ - +

Logical negation !x, bitwise not ~x, unary -x and +x.

Operators as is !is

Unsafe as cast and checks for union types: someVar is int.

Multiplicative * / % ^/ ~/

Integer multiplication, division, modulo, ceiling-division, and rounding-division. All integers have 257-bit precision.

Additive + -

Standard integer addition and subtraction.

Shifts << >> ^>> ~>>

Bitwise shifts, extended by ceiling-right and rounding-right.

Comparison == < > <= >= != <=>

Comparison operators. <=> is known as the spaceship or sign operator. Operators == and != also work for several non-numeric types. For example, addresses.

Bitwise & | ^

Standard bitwise operators, applicable to both integers and booleans.

Logical && ||

Short-circuit: the right operand is evaluated only when necessary.

Assignment = += -= and other

Assignment and augmented assignments.

Ternary ... ? ... : ...

Ternary expressions are available in conditions.

Missing operators

Tolk does not support i++ and i--. Use i += 1 and i -= 1 instead.

Warnings on unexpected precedence

A common pitfall:

if (flags & 0xFF != 0) {
    // ...
}

This does not check the lowest byte. It is parsed as flags & (0xFF != 0), because != has higher precedence, as in C++.

To prevent such cases, the compiler reports an error:

error: & has lower precedence than !=, probably this code won't work as you expected.
       Use parenthesis: either (... & ...) to evaluate it first, or (... != ...) to suppress this error.

   2 |     if (flags & 0xFF != 0) {
     |         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^