SwaziLang shorthand operators

You must have seen this => sign before. but wait we talked about it lambdas right. Yes that is a lambda opeartor it is used to create a lamda function as we descussed earlier.

• SwaziLang has some of these operators that are used in different contexts

The shorthand block operator =>>

• Woah, it looks like the lambda operator but not quite a lambda operator because this operator has a different context and it produces different results in swazi differently from what lambda => does.
• The =>> operator is called the block short shorthand operator.
• And what does it exactly do. Well it is just a a shorthand block in swazi. In this page we are going to see with examples how it can be used and why we should use it in our swazi programs.

Syntax

block statement =>> body statements

• Well its syntax is just as simple as that.
• A block statement is any statements that uses blocks to encapsulate other statement eg. kama, kazi, muundo, chagua, ikiwa, etc. as we already learnt each one if the most.
• In these block statements as we learnt earlier they may use pythonic / c-style blocks as their bodies. eg.

# simple kama statement
kama cond {
  // body here
}
# how you would write that using =>> operator
kama cond =>> // body here

other eg.

# lamda like kazi
kazi add(a,b) =>> rudisha a + b;

# a lambda of the same idea would be like this
data add = (a,b) => a+b;

• That above feels like a lambda, but it is not it is just a normal kazi function so it needs explicit rudisha statement to return value because =>> doesn't return value it just starts a block.
• so what does =>> does behinde the scene.
  1. when swazi meets =>> it replaces it with { and then goes until it finds the end of the line then appends }. so, that kazi function above is just like this kazi add(a,b) {rudisha a+b} in real life.

INFO

Things to note when using the shorthand operator.

• reduce the use of nested statements because it is a bit tricky to work with it in hard code patterns
• eg.

kama x > 5 =>> chapisha kweli; kama x < 5 =>> chapisha "less";

• Well like in this eg. the second kama is wrapped in the first kama so it will only execute if first kama is true.
• In that sense =>> is used to wrap the whole line after it in single block so if there is other =>> that means it the second is in the first block.

Let us see some usefull usage.

kazi call() =>> rudisha soma("Enter grade: ");

chagua kweli {
  ikiwa call() sawa "A" =>> chapisha "Excellent";simama;
  ikiwa call() sawa "B" =>> chapisha "Good"; simama;
  ikiwa call() sawa "C" =>> chapisha "avarage"; simama;
  ikiwa call() sawa "D" =>> chapisha "minimum"; simama;
  kaida {
  chapisha "Failed";
  }
}

Other more examples.

# used in shorthand single line object literals
data obj = =>> name:"John Doe", age:20, isMarried:kweli

# used in short muundo declarations
muundo Car =>> name;make;Car(name,make) =>> $.name=name;$.make=make;
data bmw = unda Car("BMW", "2023")
chapisha bmw // outputs {make: '2023',name: 'BMW'}
# you will study about muundo(classes) later in OOP if not yet.

# kama statement shorthand
data age = 20;
kama age > 18 =>> chapisha "Over 18"; # true here
vinginevyo =>> chapisha "Under 18";

# in loops
kwa(i=0;i<10;i++) =>> chapisha i

data x = 0;
wakati x < 10 =>> chapisha x; x++;

fanya =>> /* works same */ chapisha "fanya blocks";

# you can not use =>> in fanya-wakati loop because it needs the wakati to be just after fanya to distinguish iy from the regular fanya block

INFO

This feature is supported only from version 2.3.0 and more not less