Table of Contents

Programming Language

Zig

Zig (programminglanguage)
Full NameZig
Short NameZig
DescriptionZig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal and reusable software
CompanyZig Software Foundation
WebNo
MobileNo
EnterpriseYes
EmbeddedYes

What is Zig?

Zig is a statically-typed, general-purpose programming language designed for robustness, performance, and maintainability. It aims to be a pragmatic language that enables developers to write efficient, reliable, and secure code.

Who created Zig?

Zig was created by Andrew Kelley, who started the project in 2015.

What platforms does Zig support?

Zig is a cross-platform language that supports Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and more.

What are some key features of Zig?

Zig has a number of features that make it unique, including compile-time code execution, optional null safety, built-in error handling, and low-level control over memory allocation and deallocation.

What libraries and tools are available for Zig?

There are a number of libraries and tools available for Zig, including the Zig standard library, which provides a range of useful functions and data types, as well as third-party libraries for networking, graphics, and more. The Zig community also maintains a package manager called “zkg” to facilitate easy package installation and management.

What kind of projects is Zig well-suited for?

Zig is well-suited for projects that require high performance, low-level control over memory and system resources, and a strong focus on reliability and correctness. It's also a good choice for system programming, command-line utilities, and tools that need to interact with low-level system components.

Is Zig a beginner-friendly language?

While Zig has a relatively small learning curve compared to other low-level programming languages, it's not necessarily beginner-friendly. Developers with experience in C or other low-level languages may find it easier to pick up, but it may be more challenging for beginners who are new to programming.

Snippet from Wikipedia: Zig (programming language)

Zig is an imperative, general-purpose, statically typed, compiled system programming language designed by Andrew Kelley. It is intended as a successor to the language C, with the intent of being even smaller and simpler to program in, while offering more functionality. It is free and open-source software, released under an MIT License.

The improvements in language simplicity relate to flow control, function calls, library imports, variable declaration and Unicode support. Further, the language makes no use of macros or preprocessor instructions. Features adopted from modern languages include the addition of compile time generic programming data types, allowing functions to work on a variety of data, along with a small set of new compiler directives to allow access to the information about those types using reflective programming (reflection).

Another set of additions to Zig is intended to improve code safety. Like C, Zig omits garbage collection, and memory management is manual. To help eliminate the potential errors that arise in such systems, it includes option types, a simple syntax for using them, and a unit testing framework built into the language.

GitHub Topics

Zig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software. Focus on debugging your application rather than debugging your programming language knowledge. There is no hidden control flow, no hidden memory allocations, no preprocessor, and no macros.

Hello World

const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() !void {
    const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer();
    try stdout.print("Hello, {s}!\n", .{"world"});
}

Source: Wikibooks

See also: Programming Languages