Features you won't find in Python

Good news: Wirbel does not only lack some features of Python but also introduces some new features which we will summarize in this article.

Wirbel has special enumeration datatype and a builtin mechanism for automatically create globally unique enumeration atoms on the fly. There is no long any need to define integers for flags like tty.BOLD, mode.READONLY or filetype.SYMLINK. You can use `bold, `readonly and `symlink without any prior declaration and Wirbel makes sure that they take distinct values.

Bitsets are similar to enumeration values. Bitsets form a special datatype. A bitset value can combine up to 64 independend binary values. All C-like operators for bitwise operations like |, & and friends are supported.

Just as lists, also dictionaries can be built with comprehensions. An optional a filter expression can used to select items of choice. Look at the following example:

squares = { a : a*a for a in [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ] if a > 1 }
print(squares)

This will form the following dictionary:

user@host> wirbel dict_comprehension.w
{2:4, 3:9, 4:16}

Just as with lists comprehension can also be used to create sets from either other sets or even lists. The new set is edirectly constructed (and not first as list and than converted to a set).