Mutability

Wipple doesn’t allow you to reassign the value of a variable once you’ve declared it. Instead, you can shadow an existing variable by assigning to the same name:

x : 1 -- first assignment
x : "hello" -- second assignment

Notice how the types don’t need to be the same — this is because the two xs are distinct values.

Importantly, any code referring to the original x will continue to do so:

x : 1
show-x : () -> show x
x : 2
show-x () -- displays 1, not 2

However, there are circumstances where you actually need to change a variable’s value and have that change be shared across the program. To accommodate this, Wipple provides a Mutable type!

You can create a new Mutable value by using the mutable function:

-- mutable :: A => A -> Mutable A
x : mutable 1

To retrieve the value inside, use get:

-- get :: A => Mutable A -> A
show-x : () -> show (get x)

And use set! to change it:

-- set :: A => A -> Mutable A -> ()
x . set! 2

Now when you call show-x, you’ll get 2 instead of 1!

By convention, any function that changes the value of a Mutable input ends with !. There is no need to append ! to functions that only mutate internal state.

There are many useful functions for changing mutable values; here are just a few: