Language Basics

Now that you have Toka installed and have written your first program, let's dive into the core concepts of the language.

Hello World Revisited

The simplest Toka program needs two things: an import for the standard library, and a main function:

import std/io::println

fn main() -> i32 {
    println("Hello, Toka!")
    return 0
}

Run it with:

toka run hello.tk

Key Principles

Toka is designed around a few core principles:

1. Safety by default — Variables are immutable unless explicitly marked.
2. No hidden runtime — What you write is what gets executed. No garbage collector, no VM.
3. C-like performance — Built on LLVM 20, Toka generates optimized native code.
4. Modern syntax — Clean, readable, with intuitive pattern matching and error handling.

Comment Syntax

Comments in Toka use the standard // syntax:

// This is a single-line comment

/* This is a
   multi-line comment */

Next Steps

In the following sections, we'll explore variables, types, functions, and control flow in detail.