Using the REPL

Overview

Questions

• “How to use the REPL?”

Objectives

• “Explore basic functionality of input.”
• “Learn how to declare variables.”
• “Learn about REPL modes.”

Entering the REPL

---

Melissa and her classmates open a terminal and launch julia:

BASH

julia

JULIA

               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.7.2 (2022-02-06)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |
julia>

This is the so-called REPL, which stands for read-evaluate-print-loop. The interactive command-line REPL allows quick and easy execution of Julia statements.

Like the terminal, the Julia REPL has a prompt, where it awaits input:

JULIA

julia>

implicit promt

Most of the code boxes that follow do not show the julia> prompt, even though it’s there in the REPL. Why?

It’s important to delineate input (what you type) and output (how the machine responds). The prompt can be confusing, so it is excluded. You may assume that any Julia box prepends the prompt on each line of input.

Visual Studio Code

An alternative to using the REPL through a terminal is to work with Visual Studio Code or its open source altenative VSCodium. VSC is a source code editor for which a julia extension is available. After installing the application, simply click on the “Extension” symbol on the left side and search for julia. Once installt julia remains usable and can be selected as a programming language in new documents.

For further guidance and visual aid, check out the provided video!

Variables

The first thing they try is to perform basic arithmetic operations:

JULIA

1 + 4 * 7.3

OUTPUT

30.2

That works as expected. It is also possible to bind a name to a value via the assignment operator =, which makes it easier to refer to the value later on. These names are called variables.

JULIA

distance = 30.2
distance_x_2 = 2 * distance

OUTPUT

60.4

Melissa notices that assignment also returns the value. She can also check which variables are defined in the current session by running

JULIA

varinfo()

OUTPUT

 name                    size summary
 –––––––––––––––– ––––––––––– –––––––
 Base                         Module
 Core                         Module
 InteractiveUtils 270.164 KiB Module
 Main                         Module
 ans                  8 bytes Float64
 distance             8 bytes Float64
 distance_x_2         8 bytes Float64

Unicode

In Julia, Unicode characters are also allowed as variables like α = 2. Unicode characters can be entered by a backslash followed by their LaTeX name and then pressing tab (in this case \alphatab).

REPL-modes

Unfortunately Melissa can’t remember the LaTeX name of ∂ so she copies the character , presses ? for help mode,

JULIA

?

pastes the ∂ character, then presses enter:

JULIA

help?> ∂

OUTPUT

"∂" can be typed by \partial<tab>

Great! This way she can easily look up the names she needs. She gets back to normal mode by pressing backspace.

Another useful mode is the shell mode that can be entered by pressing ;. The prompt has now changed:

JULIA

shell>

Shell mode can be used to issue commands to the underlying shell, but don’t confuse it with an actual shell: special shell syntax like piping won’t work. Like before, hit backspace to get back to the Julia prompt.

Hello,shell>!

Use the shell mode to create a file called hello.jl with the nano terminal text editor. Inside that file write the simple hello world program print("Hello World!").

Check the content of the file using cat hello.jl and then run the program using julia hello.jl.

Show me the solution

JULIA

;

JULIA

shell> nano hello.jl
shell> cat hello.jl

OUTPUT

print("Hello World!")

JULIA

shell> julia hello.jl

OUTPUT

Hello World!

backspace

Finally there is package mode that is entered with ] which is used for package management, which will be covered later on:

JULIA

]

JULIA

pkg>

To exit shell, help or pkg mode, hit backspace.

Key Points

• “The REPL reads the given input, evaluates the given expression and prints the resulting output to the user.”
• “Pressing ? enters help mode.”
• “Pressing ; enters shell mode.”
• “Pressing ] enters pkg mode.”