Hello Squirrel

The bipscript environment is built on top of the squirrel programming language, programming in bipscript can be thought of as programming in squirrel using the bipscript API.

Squirrel Language Background

The Squirrel language is an object-oriented programming language used as the scripting language in several video game titles. It was designed to be friendly to real-time applications, this makes it ideal for use in video games and now audio scripting as well.

Basic Types and Data Structures

Primitive types in squirrel include types for boolean values, floating point numbers, integers and strings. Here we declare some primitive types using the local keyword which designates a variable with local scope:



local foo = "I'm a string"
local n = 10
local x = 0.125

More complex data structures include arrays and tables. Arrays are a zero-indexed sequence of any type:



local anArray = [2, "string", 3.03]
print(anArray[1] + "\n") // prints "string" (plus a newline)

Tables are containers that associate each value with a key:



local bob = {
    name = "Bob Johnson",
    age = 42,
    active = true,
    instruments = ["bass", "keyboards"]
}
print(bob.instruments[0] + "\n") // prints "bass"

Conditional Statements and Looping

Basic conditional branching is implemented with an if statement similar to other languages:


local x = 5
if(x > 3) {
    print(x + " is greater than 3\n")
}

There are also while loops which work as expected:


local y = 1
while(y <= 10) {
    print("y is now " + y + "\n")
    y++
}

An alternative to the above is the standard for loop:


for(local z = 1; z <= 10; z++) {
    print("z is now " + z + "\n")
}

There is also a foreach loop for arrays and tables:


foreach(key, val in bob) {
    print("key '" + key + "' has value: " + val + "\n")
}

More Information


Complete Script

local foo = "I'm a string"
local n = 10
local x = 0.125

local anArray = [2, "string", 3.03]
print(anArray[1] + "\n") // prints "string" (plus a newline)

local bob = {
    name = "Bob Johnson",
    age = 42,
    active = true,
    instruments = ["bass", "keyboards"]
}
print(bob.instruments[0] + "\n") // prints "bass"

local x = 5
if(x > 3) {
    print(x + " is greater than 3\n")
}

local y = 1
while(y <= 10) {
    print("y is now " + y + "\n")
    y++
}

for(local z = 1; z <= 10; z++) {
    print("z is now " + z + "\n")
}

foreach(key, val in bob) {
    print("key '" + key + "' has value: " + val + "\n")
}
Tutorial Index • List of All Examples

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