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Introduction
Hey Ninjas! You must have heard about Carbon; it is getting very popular these days. You might be wondering what the Carbon code looks like and how you can run it. So, we are here to take over your thinking and will make you familiar with the Carbon language. We will be discussing what Carbon is and how to run Carbon code.
Let’s start by introducing the Carbon language.
Carbon Programming Language
Carbon is an experimental open-source programming language released by the developers of Google. It serves as a successor to C++ language. It provides the developers with developments in the concepts like memory safety, generics, etc.
Carbon solves problems of C++, like language and software evolution and performance-critical software. It provides easy-to-understand code and fast and scalable development. Carbon also handles the issues of converting large C++ codebases into Rust.
Now, you have got a basic idea of what Carbon is. We can now move on to understand how to run Carbon code.
How to run Carbon Code?
In order to compile a code, a compiler is required. Since Carbon is a new language, there is no compiler yet. We need a Carbon explorer to run Carbon code. It is used to interpret the code written in the Carbon language and print its output. There are two options to use Carbon explorer,
Online Compiler for General
We can use Carbon compiler-explorer to run the code for any kind of machine.
You can write your code in the left panel, as shown in this image:
On the right, you can find the trace of your code. So the Carbon language has a way to specify the syntax called Trace, which is like the entire debug statements that get executed for a Carbon language code. We will skip this part for now, and let's see how to view the output.
There is a tab at the bottom for the output, click on it, and a window will open that displays the output for the code.
Now let's see how we can create our own Carbon explorer.
How to Set up and Install Carbon Language?
We can create our own Carbon explorer for macOS and Linux operating systems. Let's look at the instructions step by step.
Step-1 Install Homebrew
Homebrew is a package manager for macOS and Linux. You can install it using this command:
If you already have Homebrew, you can check the version by brew –version.
Step-2 Install Bazel
Bazel is a build and test tool that supports multiple languages and platforms. It is an open-source tool. You can use this command to install Bazel.
brew install bazelisk
This will install and set up the Bazel. If any error is there, it will be displayed by the error message from Bazel.
Step-3 Install LLVM
A low-level virtual machine or LLVM is used to compile and link Carbon language code. The following command is used to install LLVM:
brew install llvm
On macOS, you need to run an additional command to update the path:
export PATH="$(brew --prefix llvm)/bin:${PATH}"
Step-4 Clone Carbon Language
You need to download the Carbon language code on your local machine. To clone the Carbon language code, run the following commands in the appropriate folder.
$ git clone https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
$ cd carbon-lang
Step-5 Run the Explorer
We are done with the setup part. Now it's time to use this Carbon explorer to run our first Carbon code. Run the below command in the same carbon-lang directory you have cloned from git.
bazel run //explorer -- ./explorer/testdata/print/demo.carbon
This command will invoke the Bazel build tool, which runs the actual code of the ./explorer/testdata/print/demo.carbon file.
Make sure to use the file extension .carbon in the file where you write Carbon code.
Output for the same is shown below:
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Carbon?
Carbon is an experimental language launched by the developers of Google. It can be seen as the successor of the C++ language. It solves the difficulties of C++ and has advanced features like memory safety, generics, etc.
What are the goals of Carbon language?
The Carbon language is designed to support performance-critical software. It is used to write code that is easy to understand and write. It comes with the benefit of fast and scalable development.
Why is Carbon an open-source language?
The open-source approach is very effective and successful for languages like Carbon. It is important to have a broad community working on improving it. The project is developed in such a way to be contributed by both small and large players.
How are variables declared in Carbon?
Variables are declared with the var keyword. The : is used after the variable names. Example: var x: i32 = 7. The integer type is specified by i32 in this example.
Conclusion
This article was about the Carbon language. We have discussed what Carbon language is and How to run Carbon code. We have seen both methods of using Carbon explorer. One way is to use the online Carbon explorer, and the other is to build our own Carbon explorer.
You can check out our other articles if you want to dive deep into other concepts related to Carbon language -
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