Overview of Lexical Structure¶

Quxlang source makes language vocabulary visually distinct: keywords are uppercase, while programmer-defined identifiers are lowercase.

Identifiers and keywords¶

An identifier begins with a through z, continues with lowercase letters, digits, or _, and does not end in _:

VAR item_count I32 := 4;
::source_module NAMESPACE
{
}

Names such as Value, _value, and value_ are not user identifiers. Uppercase words such as VAR, FUNCTION, and STATIC_IF belong to the language and compiler.

Comments and numeric literals¶

VAR count I32 := 42; // A line comment continues to the line end.
VAR fraction F64 := 12.5;
VAR negative I32 := 0 - 7;

Numeric tokens use decimal digits with at most one decimal point. The minus in a negative value is an operator, not part of the numeric token. Current source does not use C-style hexadecimal, binary, exponent, or digit-separator syntax.

String and byte literals¶

VAR message STRING_CONSTANT := "line one\nline two";
VAR newline BYTE := '\n';

Double quotes form strings and single quotes form one-byte character literals. Common escapes include newline, tab, carriage return, zero, and escaped quote or backslash characters.

Reference¶

See the Lexical Structure Reference for the exact identifier grammar, whitespace and comment rules, numeric forms, and all supported literal escapes.