# Purpose

Y is designed as a language for code golf and competitive programming. Unlike many other golf languages however, it also aims to be easily understandable to someone understanding only the basics of its syntax.

Y is not a stack-based language like many other golf languages are. Instead it operates on a paradigm similar to many conventional languages. Values are passed as arguments to functions and stored in variables.

# Syntax

Named values in Y consist of either variables, monads or dyads. A variable is self explanatory: it holds one value. A monad is a function that takes one argument. For example: ! is a monad which returns the boolean inverse of its argument. + is a dyad, it takes two arguments, for example: 2 + 4 evaluates to 6.

Built-in arithmetic functions are by default right associative, whereas other functions are by default left associative. By convention, functions which take some data and some information on how to process the data should take the data as their first argument, so that they can be used without grouping.

« a and b here are user defined functions, and therefore left
associative. These two examples are equivelant: »
123 a X b Y
(123 a X) b Y

Data-first and left associative dyads can conveniently be “chained” in series like so:

a X b Y c Z d

This might be equivalent to the following in a C-style language: Z(Y(X(a, b), c), d).

## Precedence

All functions in Y have their own precedence that dictates how they are parsed.

Functions follow largely the same precedence as they do in math. User defined functions by default have precedence 5. Consult the reference at the end of this manual for precedence information.

## Definitions

The built-in functions =, ← and ↔ are used to define names. The first is used to define variables, the second to define monads, and the final to define dyads. For example:

« identity monad, monad argument is always named x »
id ← \{x} ;
« return the greater of two arguments, dyad arguments are x and y »
max ↔ \{ x < y && y || x };

The \{} syntax seen in this example is very common in Y. The backslash (\) is Y’s quote operator, equivalent to ’ in Lisp. Curly braces are used to define an array. When an array is quoted in Y — just as in Lisp —, its contents is not evaluated but preserved as-is, perhaps to be evaluated later.

Unlike Lisp however, quoted arrays in Y are not used to define lists of plain data, as the parser will still compile the contents of the array into an intermediate representation consumable by the interpreter. Arrays of values are written without the preceding quote, just as a series of expressions in curly braces.

## Arrays

Arrays in Y are defined as a series of expressions surrounded in curly braces ({ and }). If the termination of each expression is not ambiguous then semicolons are not necessary to separate them. For example:

evens = {2 4 6 8 10};
« Same as »
evens = {2; 2-2; 12/2; 4*4; 10};

The At dyad can be used to index an array. Array indices are 1-based, that is: the first element is at index 1, the second at 2, etc.

# Reference

## Core functions

Name Description Type Precedence

## Logical and arithmetic functions

Name Description Type Precedence
* or × Multiply DYADR 4
/ or ÷ Divide DYADR 4