Script files

Launch

Mélodium scripts can be launched using melodium command:

melodium main_script.mel

Or if the main script includes a shebang:

./main_script.mel

Recommended shebang being #!/usr/bin/env melodium.

Hierarchy and inclusion

There are 3 roots when reffering to external elements in Mélodium:

  • main, relative to the main script file;
  • core, relative to the build-in language elements;
  • std, relative to the standard library.

The local root can also be used and refers to the current location of the script. Areas in Mélodium are matching the filesystem hierarchy.

// Import element John from local/foo/bar, coming from file ./foo/bar.mel
use local/foo/bar::John

// Import element Doe from main/baz, coming from file <main dir>/baz.mel
use main/baz::Doe

Note about encoding

Mélodium script files are plain UTF-8 text, without byte order mark. This choice is made for three main reasons:

  1. a choice on encoding, even arbitrary, is better than no choice;
  2. Unicode provides the wider support for any characters from all human languages and scripts, existing and future, ensuring continuity;
  3. the Mélodium engine is implemented in Rust, itself natively representing text as UTF-8.