Void

When you look into the 'Void', only 'null' can be seen.

Is there anybody out there?

An entry is evaluated to null if not defined on current scope.

You can compare with null using equality == or inequality !=, like:

a == null  # true, if 'a' is not defined
0 != null  # true, because 0 is a defined value

Keep in mind that you can't declare an entry with no value in FatScript.

While you can assign null to an entry, it causes different behaviors depending on whether the entry already exists in the scope and whether it's mutable or not:

• If an entry hasn't been declared yet, assigning it null has no effect.
• If it already exists and is immutable, assigning null raises an error.
• If it already exists and is mutable, assigning null removes the entry.

Delete statement

Assigning null to a mutable entry is the same as deleting that entry from the scope. If deleted, nothing is remembered about that entry in the scope, not even it's original type.

~ m = 4   # mutable number entry
m = null  # deletes m from scope

null "values" are always mutable, as in fact nothing is stored about them, and therefore they are the only kind of "value" that may transition from a mutable state to an immutable state when "reassigned"

Comparisons

You can use Void to check against the value of an entry also, like:

()    == Void  # true
null  == Void  # true
false == Void  # false
0     == Void  # false
''    == Void  # false
[]    == Void  # false
{}    == Void  # false

Note that Void only accepts () and null.

Forms of emptiness

In FatScript, the concept of "emptiness" or the absence of a value can be represented in two ways: using null or empty parentheses (). They are effectively identical, in terms of behavior in code:

null  == null  # true
()    == null  # true
()    == ()    # true

Using null

The null keyword explicitly denotes the absence of a value. It is commonly used in scenarios where a parameter or return value might not point to any value.

method(null, otherParam)

var = null

It can also be used to make a parameter optional, allowing methods to be called with varying numbers of arguments:

method = (mandatory: Text, optional: Text = null) -> {
  ...
}

null can be used explicitly in any context where an absence of value needs to be represented

Using empty parentheses

When used in the context of method returns, () can signify that the method does not return any meaningful value.

fn = -> {
  doSomething

  ()
}

Here, fn performs some action and then uses () to indicate the absence of a meaningful return value, effectively returning void.

The difference lies in code style, so this is just a suggestion, not a hard rule.

in modern versions of the interpreter, empty parentheses () are treated as null, ensuring consistent behavior, but, earlier versions required explicitly using null to denote the absence of a return value

See also

• Void prototype extensions