Boolean, character, and byte

Boolean

bool has the values true and false. Comparisons produce booleans, and !, &&, and || provide logical negation, conjunction, and disjunction.

bool enabled = true;
bool ready = enabled && 3 > 1;
if (ready) {
  println("Ready");
}

Logical operations short-circuit. Numeric values do not convert to bool. Nullable-reference presence is also accepted in conditions, as explained under nullability. bool::parse(text) accepts exactly true or false.

Character

char represents exactly one Unicode scalar value using 32-bit storage. Valid values range from U+0000 through U+10FFFF, excluding the surrogate range U+D800 through U+DFFF. Character literals use single quotes; strings use double quotes.

char letter = 'A';
char thread = '🧵';
char maximum = '\u{10FFFF}';
println(letter);

A raw literal must contain exactly one well-formed UTF-8 scalar. The Unicode escape \u{HEX} accepts one through six hexadecimal digits, either letter case, and leading zeroes. For example, '\u{1F9F5}' is identical to '🧵', and '\u{0}' is identical to '\0'. Empty and multi-scalar literals, malformed UTF-8, surrogates, and out-of-range escapes are compile-time errors.

Character output encodes the scalar as UTF-8. An invalid Unicode scalar traps. char is separate from the numeric integer types and cannot be used as an integer operand for bitwise or byte-order operations. char::parse(text) accepts exactly one Unicode scalar value. Indexing a string produces a char, and for in traverses a string as Unicode scalar values. See strings.

Byte

byte is an unsigned eight-bit integer with values from 0 to 255. A byte[] is a managed array of bytes.

byte[] bytes = [0, 0, 0, 0];
int32 number = 42;
number::writeLittleEndian(bytes, 0);
println(bytes::readInt32LittleEndian(0));

See binary data for range checks and the complete set of read and write operations. Use byte::parse(text) for strict text conversion, including decimal and prefixed integer syntax. See input and primitive parsing.