How-to Guides on Zenth Programming Language

Getting Started

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Getting Started

#Prerequisites

Zenth compiles to native binaries through Go, so you need:

Go 1.26 or later
just command runner (optional, for convenience)

#Installation

Clone the repository and build the compiler:

git clone https://github.com/mkaz/zenth.git
cd zenth
just build

This produces a zenth binary in the current directory. To install it to your $GOPATH/bin:

just install

#Your First Program

Create a file called hello.zn:

fn main() {
 Println("Hello, World!");
}

Every Zenth program needs a main function as its entry point.

Read and Process a File

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Read and Process a File

This guide shows how to read a file, process its contents line by line, and write the results to another file.

#Read an entire file as a string

fn main() {
 let content = File("input.txt").read();
 Println(content);
}

#Read a file line by line

Use .lines() to get an array of strings, one per line:

fn main() {
 let lines = File("input.txt").lines();
 for i, line in lines {
 Println("{i}: {line}");
 }
}

#Check if a file exists first

fn main() {
 let f = File("input.txt");
 if !f.exists() {
 Println("file not found: " + f.name());
 Exit(1);
 }
 let lines = f.lines();
 Println("Read {lines.length()} lines");
}

#Process and write results to a new file

Read lines, transform them, and write the output:

Parse Puzzle Input

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Parse Puzzle Input

This guide shows common parsing patterns for structured text input: one number per line, comma-separated values, blank-line sections, coordinates, key/value fields, and mixed text. These are the kinds of transformations that come up constantly in Advent of Code problems.

#Read a whole file and trim it

Use .read() when the input is one block of text, then .strip() to remove the trailing newline:

fn main() {
 let raw = File("input.txt").read().strip();
 Println(raw);
}

This is useful for single-line inputs like 389125467 or target area: x=20..30, y=-10..-5.