* Strings.

This commit is contained in:
Eelco Dolstra 2006-10-04 16:02:18 +00:00
parent 407c9fd520
commit 59ef0aaf3f

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@ -595,9 +595,54 @@ language.</para>
<itemizedlist> <itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Strings</emphasis>, <listitem>
enclosed between double quotes, e.g., <literal>"foo bar"</literal>.
TODO: antiquotations, escaping.</para></listitem> <para><emphasis>Strings</emphasis> are enclosed between double
quotes, e.g., <literal>"foo bar"</literal>. Strings can span
multiple lines. The special characters <literal>"</literal> and
<literal>\</literal> and the character sequence
<literal>${</literal> must be escaped by prefixing them with a
backslash (<literal>\</literal>). Newlines, carriage returns and
tabs can be written as <literal>\n</literal>,
<literal>\r</literal> and <literal>\t</literal>,
respectively.</para>
<para>You can include the result of an expression into a string by
enclosing it in
<literal>${<replaceable>...</replaceable>}</literal>, a feature
known as <emphasis>antiquotation</emphasis>. The enclosed
expression must evaluate to something that can be coerced into a
string (meaning that it must be a string, a path, or a
derivation). For instance, rather than writing
<programlisting>
"--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib"</programlisting>
(where <varname>freetype</varname> is a derivation), you can
instead write the more natural
<programlisting>
"--with-freetype2-library=${freetype}/lib"</programlisting>
The latter is automatically translated to the former. A more
complicated example (from the Nix expression for <link
xlink:href='http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt'>Qt</link>):
<programlisting>
configureFlags = "
-system-zlib -system-libpng -system-libjpeg
${if openglSupport then "-dlopen-opengl
-L${mesa}/lib -I${mesa}/include
-L${libXmu}/lib -I${libXmu}/include" else ""}
${if threadSupport then "-thread" else "-no-thread"}</programlisting>
Note that Nix expressions and strings can be arbitrarily nested;
in this case the outer string contains various antiquotations that
themselves contain strings (e.g., <literal>"-thread"</literal>),
some of which in turn contain expressions (e.g.,
<literal>${mesa}</literal>).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Integers</emphasis>, e.g., <listitem><para><emphasis>Integers</emphasis>, e.g.,
<literal>123</literal>.</para></listitem> <literal>123</literal>.</para></listitem>
@ -1272,7 +1317,17 @@ command-line argument. See <xref linkend='sec-standard-environment'
<section><title>Built-in functions</title> <section><title>Built-in functions</title>
<para>TODO</para> <para>This section lists the functions and constants built into the
Nix expression evaluator. (The built-in function
<function>derivation</function> is discussed above.) Some built-ins,
such as <function>derivation</function>, are always in scope of every
Nix expression; you can just access them right away. But to prevent
polluting the namespace too much, most built-ins are not in scope.
Instead, you can access them through the <varname>builtins</varname>
built-in value, which is an attribute set that contains all built-in
functions and values. For instance, <function>derivation</function>
is also available as <function>builtins.derivation</function>.</para>
<variablelist> <variablelist>