Builtin Functions

Spice offers five builtin functions out of the box. Those can be used anywhere without having to be imported manually and can be used to establish a minimal setup for testing or the like.

The printf builtin¶

Printf works the same as the printf function in C and is designed for printing a string to the standard text output (cout).

Signature¶

void printf(string template, ...args)

template: Template string, which can contain placeholders for values, passed as args to the printf builtin.
args: Arbitrary number of arguments of any type. The particular type and the order of the types have to match the placeholders of the template string.

Within the template string you can use control characters like the \n control character to achieve line breaks. This works on Linux and Windows the same way.

Placeholders¶

Usage example¶

printf("Here is a string: %s.\nAnd here is a double: %f", "Demo", 1.123);

The sizeof builtin¶

Sizeof returns the internal size of a variable or a constant in bits. To get the size in bytes, simply divide the result by 8.

Signature¶

int sizeof(<any variable>) int sizeof(type <any type>)

any variable: Variable or constant of any type. any type: Any data type

If the variable is a pointer type, the size of the contained type is being returned.

Usage example¶

sizeof(12); // 32
sizeof(type int) // 32

int[9] intArray = {};
sizeof(intArray); // 9 * 32 = 288

sizeof("Hello World!"); // 64 (Strings are Char pointers internally)

The len builtin¶

Len returns the length of a Spice array in items.

Signature¶

int len(any[] variable)

variable: Variable of any array type.

Usage example¶

len({1, 2, 3, 4}); // 4

string[5] stringArray = {"string1", "string2", "string3"};
len(stringArray); // 5

The tid builtin¶

Tid returns the thread id of the current thread.

Signature¶

int tid()

Usage example¶

int threadId = tid();

The join builtin¶

Join waits for the termination of the one or more given threads. It returns the number of joined threads as an int.

Signature¶

int join(byte* ...threadIds)

Usage example¶

byte* t1 = thread {
    usleep(300 * 1000);
    printf("Thread 1 finished\n");
};

byte* t2 = thread {
    usleep(100 * 1000);
    printf("Thread 2 finished\n");
};

int threadsJoined = join(t1, t2);