Neko Libraries

Several libraries are already available with the standard Neko distribution. This document lists these libraries and also gives some guidelines about how to notate types for automatic documentation generation.

Libraries

The Standard Library comprises several modules: Buffer, Date, File, Int32, Math, MD5, Memory, Module, Random, Serialize, Socket, String, System, UTF8, Xml, Thread, Ui, Process, Misc, Regexp, Mysql, Mod_neko, Sqlite, ZLib and the builtins.

If you want to write your own libraries, have a look at the C FFI Documentation.

Types

Here's the notation of types that should be used when documenting libraries :

• the basic types null, int, float, bool, string, array, object, function.

• the type any if any value is accepted.

• the type void can be used if the function is not supposed to return any meaningful value.

• the type number if both int and float are accepted.

• the type function: if a function with n parameters is accepted.

• for abstracts, you need to give them a name (corresponding to their kind) and write it with a single quote as the prefix (for example 'file is an abstract of kind file).

• for arrays that contain a specified type of value, you can write the type before, then int array is an array containing only integers and 'file array array is a two dimensions array that contains abstract files.

• for objects that must contain some fields, you can write it using Neko notation with types : { x => int, y => int } means an object having at least two fields x and y of type int.

• if the null value is accepted as well as some other type, you can write, for example int?, which means int or null.

• if several types are accepted you can separate them with pipes. number is actually a shortcut for `int	float`.

• you can introduce your own names, prefixed with a sharp, that can be defined in your documentation using for example #point = { x => int, y => int }. In the case you don't define your type, the user of the library shouldn't rely on its actual implementation since you can change it in the future.

Please respect this type notation standard when documenting your Neko programs and libraries: it will help the people using them.