Quick Start

Write your first May program in under a minute. By the end of this page you will have run a script, used the pipe operator, and served a web page.

Hello world

Create a file called hello.may:

import "io";

print("Hello world!");
colprint("Hello world in red!", "red");

Run it:

may hello.may

Variables and types

May has a small set of types you declare with keywords:

int count = 0;
string name = "May";
float pi = 3.14;
object user = { name: "Ada", age: 30 };
array scores = [88, 92, 75];
var anything = 42;

The pipe operator

May has a Unix-style pipe operator that feeds the value on the left into the function on the right. It makes data transformations read top-to-bottom, left-to-right.

import "io";
import "string";

"hello world" | upper | print;

Equivalent to print(upper("hello world")) but easier to extend.

Functions

Declare functions by writing a return type, a name, parameters, and a body:

int square(int n) {
    return n * n;
}

square(5) | print;

Your first server

May has an HTTP server and an HTML builder built in. Here is a complete web app:

import "io";
import "http";
import "html";

string home() {
    return html({
        children: [
            body({
                children: [
                    h1({ children: ["Welcome to May"] }),
                    p({ children: ["This page was rendered by a 20 line script."] })
                ]
            })
        ]
    });
}

int server = create_server(8080);
print("Listening on http://localhost:8080");

while (1) {
    int client = accept_client(server);
    object req = read_request(client);
    send_html(client, router(req, { "/": home() }));
}

Run it with may server.may and open http://localhost:8080.

Where next?

Read the Syntax page for a full tour of the language, or browse the Standard Library to see every builtin available.