Variables

Variables in Opshin are declared just like you'd expect them to in Python:

# A simple variable declaration
x = 5 

# A variable declaration with annotated type, x must be an integer
x: int = 5 

# Variables in Opshin can be mutated.
x += 1

Note: For now int is the only number type available in Opshin. fractions are coming soon.

Type annotation

If you want to make sure that a variable has the type you expect it to have you may use type annotation at the time of assinging a variable.

x: int = some_function()

This will make sure that some_function actually returns an integer.

Annotations can also be used for type up- and downcasts. For example if you receive a value y of type Union[A, B] you can run

z: A = y

This will cast y to type A in the type system but will not check the type during runtime. Use with care.

The other way around, if you receive a value of type A but you may want to use it as a Union[A, B] you can run

z: Union[A, B] = y

This will allow you to also store objects of type B in z later in the code.

Note that the type of a variable can not be changed after initialization. This is true as of version 0.19.0 and may change again in a later version.

Tuple Assignments

Opshin supports Python's tuple assignment syntax:

a, b = 3, 7