Numbat Documentation

The extension directory contains the following key files for defining language support:

• package.json: The manifest file where you declare language support and define the location of the grammar file.
• syntaxes/numbat.tmLanguage.json: The TextMate grammar file used for syntax tokenization.
• language-configuration.json: Defines language-specific settings such as comment tokens and bracket matching.

The Numbat extension provides the following language support features for the Numbat programming language:

• Syntax highlighting
• Code block folding
• Comment toggling
• Autosurrounding brackets

Numbat supports arithmetic operations on DateTime objects.

Supported Operations:

• DateTime - DateTime: Returns a Time (duration) between the two dates. By default, the result is in seconds.
• DateTime + Time: Returns a new DateTime by adding a duration to the date.
• DateTime - Time: Returns a new DateTime by subtracting a duration from the date.
• DateTime -> tz("..."): Converts the datetime to the specified time zone.

Important Note on Calendar Arithmetic: Directly adding/subtracting days, months, or years (e.g., now() + 3 months) uses fixed definitions (e.g., 1 day = 24 hours) which may not account for Daylight Saving Time or varying month lengths. For accurate calendar-aware arithmetic, use calendar_add or calendar_sub instead.

You can add type annotations to variable definitions using the syntax let <identifier>: <Type> = <value>. Type annotations are verified by the Numbat type checker. Using them can improve code readability and help catch errors early in complex definitions.

let Δp: Pressure = 0.1 bar
let μ_water: DynamicViscosity = 1 mPa·s

You can convert the result of an expression to a specific unit by appending -> followed by the target unit at the end of the expression. This also helps Numbat validate that the calculation is dimensionally correct.

let radioactivity = N_A * occurrence * decay_rate / molar_mass -> Bq / g

After building, you can serve the generated web assets located in the www folder using a local web server. Using Python's built-in HTTP server is a quick way to do this. Once the server is running, access the application at http://0.0.0.0:8000/ in your browser.

cd www
python -m http.server