Lingo

Here are some terms used throughout this documentation and their meanings. This list is meant to help you better understand what is said, but most experienced programmers should already know these:

  • “Statement” - Something that happens by itself within the code. These are separated by semicolons
  • “Expression” - Something that represents a value rather than a command. These are used within statements to input data to them
  • “Attribute” - Something that is a part of another object. These are accessed through the dot (.) operator
  • “Field” - A type of attribute that represents a value or piece of data
  • “Method” - A type of attribute that returns a value when invoked
  • “Function” - A type of attribute that exists to be used as a statement

Syntax

Scrybe syntax is similar to that of languages like JavaScript.

Statements (but not property declarations) are separated by a semicolon, and thus whitespace/newlines don’t not matter unless in a string. So, minified Scrybe code is possible.

All indexes are zero-based, unlike Scratch, which has one-based indexing. This rule applies everywhere except costume/backdrop numbers.

When writing the body of a container, it may either be a set of statements enclosed in braces, or a single statement. This behavior is inspired from braced programming languages, and allows you to do things like:

if (i % 3 == 0 and i % 5 == 0)
    say("Fizzbuzz");           // This statement belongs to the first "if" body
else if (i % 3 == 0)           // This "else" statement also belongs to the first "if" body
    say("Fizz");
else if (i % 5 == 0)           // This "else" statement belongs to the second "if" body
    say("Buzz");
else
    say(i);

Expressions may be enclosed in parentheses to alter precedence.

Error Messages

Scrybe error messages are meant to be easy to debug. They contain the location of the faulty code, a descriptive error message, and the last few lines of code leading up to the line the error is on. All in all, having problems with your code is no pleasant experience, but with Scrybe, at least they look pretty.