introduction.md

Basics

Elixir is a dynamically-typed language, meaning that the type of a variable is only checked at runtime. Using the match = operator, we can bind a value of any type to a variable name:

count = 1 # Bound an integer value of 1
count = 2 # You may re-bind variables

count = false # You may re-bind any type to a variable

message = "Success!" # Strings can be created by enclosing characters within double quotes

Modules

Elixir is an functional-programming language and requires all named functions to be defined in a module. The defmodule keyword is used to define a module. All modules are available to all other modules at runtime and do not require an access modifier to make them visible to other parts of the program. A module is analogous to a class in other programming languages.

defmodule Calculator do
  # ...
end

Named functions

Named Functions must be defined in a module. Each function can have zero or more arguments. All arguments are dynamically-typed, and the return type is not explicitly declared, it is the type of the value returned. An access modifier can be specified for functions, making only desired functions available for use external to the module. In a function, the value of the last line is implicitly returned to the calling function.

Invoking a function is done by specifying its module- and function name and passing arguments for each of the function's arguments. The module name may be omitted if the function is invoked inside of the module.

You may also write short functions using a one-line syntax (note the comma , and the colon : around the keyword do).

defmodule Calculator do
  def add(x, y) do
    x + y
  end

  def short_add(x, y), do: x + y
end

sum = Calculator.add(1, 2)
# => 3
sum = Calculator.short_add(2, 2)
# => 4

Arity of functions

It is common to refer to functions with their arity. The arity of a function is the number of arguments it accepts.

# add/3 because this function has three arguments, thus an arity of 3
def add(x, y, z) do
  x + y + z
end

Standard library

Elixir has a very rich and well-documented standard library. The documentation is available online at hexdocs.pm/elixir. Save this link somewhere - you will use it a lot!

Most built-in data types have a corresponding module that offers functions for working with that data type, e.g. there's the Integer module for integers, String module for strings, List module for lists and so on.

A notable module is the Kernel module. It provides the basic capabilities on top of which the rest of the standard library is built, like arithmetic operators, control-flow macros, and much more. Functions for the Kernel module are automatically imported, so you can use them without the Kernel. prefix.

Documentation

Documentation is a priority in high-quality Elixir code bases, and there are 3 ways to write inline documentation:

• Comments can be used for inline documentation. Single line comments in Elixir are preceded by #.
• Function-level documentation uses the @doc annotation preceding named function definitions
• Module-level documentation uses the @moduledoc annotation following the module definition