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Technical FAQ
This section answers technical questions about using the Erg language. In other words, it contains questions that begin with What or Which, and questions that can be answered with Yes/No.
For more information on how the grammar was determined, see here for the underlying syntax decisions, and here.
Is there an exception mechanism in Erg?
A: No. Erg uses the Result type instead. See here for why Erg does not have an exception mechanism.
Does Erg have a type equivalent to TypeScript's Any?
A: No, there is not. All objects belong to at least the Object class, but this type only provides a minimal set of attributes, so you can't do whatever you want with it like you can with Any.
The Object class is converted to the desired type through dynamic inspection by match, etc. It is the same kind of Object in Java and other languages.
In the Erg world, there is no chaos and hopelessness like in TypeScript, where the API definition is ``Any''.
What is the difference between Never, {}, None, (), NotImplemented, and Ellipsis?
A: Never is an "impossible" type. A subroutine that produces a runtime error has Never (or a merger type of Never) as its return type. The program will stop as soon as it detects this. Although the Never type is by definition also a subclass of all types, Never type objects never appear in Erg code and are never created. {} is equivalent to Never.
Ellipsis is an object that represents an ellipsis, and comes from Python.
NotImplemented is also from Python. It is used as a marker for not implemented, but Erg prefers the todo function which produces an error.
None is an instance of NoneType. It is often used with the Option type.
() is a unit type and an instance of itself. It is used when you want to return a "meaningless value" such as the return value of a procedure.
Why is x = p!() valid but f() = p!() causes an EffectError?
! is not a marker for the product of a side-effect, but for an object that can cause a side-effect.
Procedure p! and mutable type T! can cause side effects, but if the return value of p!(), for example, is of type Int, it itself no longer causes side effects.
When I try to use the Python API, I get a type error in Erg for code that was valid in Python. What does this mean?
A: The Erg API is typed as closely as possible to the Python API specification, but there are some cases that cannot be fully expressed. Also, input that is valid according to the specification but deemed undesirable (for example, inputting a float when an int should be inputted) may be treated as a type error at the discretion of the Erg development team.