// // "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst // of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that // we should voyage far." // // from The Call of Cthulhu // by H. P. Lovecraft // // Zig has at least four ways of expressing "no value": // // * undefined // // var foo: u8 = undefined; // // "undefined" should not be thought of as a value, but as a way // of telling the compiler that you are not assigning a value // _yet_. Any type may be set to undefined, but attempting // to read or use that value is _always_ a mistake. // // * null // // var foo: ?u8 = null; // // The "null" primitive value _is_ a value that means "no value". // This is typically used with optional types as with the ?u8 // shown above. When foo equals null, that's not a value of type // u8. It means there is _no value_ of type u8 in foo at all! // // * error // // var foo: MyError!u8 = BadError; // // Errors are _very_ similar to nulls. They _are_ a value, but // they usually indicate that the "real value" you were looking // for does not exist. Instead, you have an error. The example // error union type of MyError!u8 means that foo either holds // a u8 value OR an error. There is _no value_ of type u8 in foo // when it's set to an error! // // * void // // var foo: void = {}; // // "void" is a _type_, not a value. It is the most popular of the // Zero Bit Types (those types which take up absolutely no space // and have only a semantic value. When compiled to executable // code, zero bit types generate no code at all. The above example // shows a variable foo of type void which is assigned the value // of an empty expression. It's much more common to see void as // the return type of a function that returns nothing. // // Zig has all of these ways of expressing different types of "no value" // because they each serve a purpose. Briefly: // // * undefined - there is no value YET, this cannot be read YET // * null - there is an explicit value of "no value" // * errors - there is no value because something went wrong // * void - there will NEVER be a value stored here // // Please use the correct "no value" for each ??? to make this program // print out a cursed quote from the Necronomicon. ...If you dare. // const std = @import("std"); const Err = error{Cthulhu}; pub fn main() void { var first_line1: *const [16]u8 = ???; first_line1 = "That is not dead"; var first_line2: Err!*const [21]u8 = ???; first_line2 = "which can eternal lie"; std.debug.print("{s} {s} / ", .{ first_line1, first_line2 }); printSecondLine(); } fn printSecondLine() ??? { var second_line2: ?*const [18]u8 = ???; second_line2 = "even death may die"; std.debug.print("And with strange aeons {s}.\n", .{second_line2.?}); }