Introduction

Welcome to Chemical, a modern, statically typed systems programming language with a clean syntax and seamless interoperability with C libraries.

• File extension: .ch
• Module descriptor: chemical.mod

In this book, you will learn how to:

1. Scaffold a new Chemical project
2. Write and organize your source code in Markdown-friendly files
3. Import and use modules (including the C standard library via cstd)
4. Build and run your Chemical applications

Hello, World!

1. Create a directory for your project and enter it:

   mkdir hello_chemical && cd hello_chemical
   

2. Create a src/ folder and add main.ch:

   src/main.ch
   

3. In src/main.ch, write your first program:

   public func main() : int {
       printf("Hello, World!\n");
       return 0;
   }
   

4. Create the chemical.mod file at the project root to describe sources and dependencies:

   chemical.mod
   

   module main
   
   # Tell the compiler to include all .ch files in `src/`
   source "src"
   
   # Import the C standard library module
   import cstd
   

Your project structure now looks like:

hello_chemical/
├── chemical.mod
└── src/
    └── main.ch

5. Build and run your program:

• Windows:

  chemical.exe chemical.mod -o main.exe
  .\main.exe
  

• Linux/macOS:

  chemical chemical.mod -o main && ./main
  

Tip: If you prefer not to import cstd, you can declare extern functions inline:

@extern
public func printf(format: *char, _ : any...) : int

That's it! You’ve just compiled and run your first Chemical program. In the next chapter, we’ll dive deeper into project structure and configuration.```