Getting Started

Zolo is a modern programming language built on top of the Lua 5.1 VM, with syntax inspired by Rust and Swift. It compiles to Lua and runs on a custom Lua VM implemented in Rust.

Philosophy #

Curly braces {} instead of do/then/end
Explicit types with inference (like Rust)
0-based indexing
Optional semicolons
Native string interpolation
Null safety by default
Functional expressiveness with |> and short closures

Installation #

Build from source:

cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/zolo (or target/release/zolo.exe on Windows).

Hello World #

Create a file hello.zolo:

fn main() {
    print("Hello, Zolo!")
}

main()

Run it:

zolo run hello.zolo

CLI Commands #

Command	Description
`zolo run <file>`	Compile and execute a `.zolo` file
`zolo <file>`	Shorthand for `zolo run`
`zolo compile <file>`	Show generated Lua code
`zolo check <file>`	Parse and type check without executing
`zolo test [file...]`	Run `@test` functions
`zolo fmt [--check] <file>`	Format source code
`zolo repl`	Interactive REPL
`zolo version`	Show version
`zolo help`	Show help

Test Options #

zolo test tests.zolo                # run all @test functions
zolo test tests.zolo --filter fib   # only tests matching "fib"
zolo test tests.zolo --list         # list test names without running

Project Structure #

A typical Zolo project:

my-project/
  src/
    main.zolo       # entry point
    lib.zolo        # library module
    utils.zolo      # utilities
  examples/
    hello.zolo
  tests/
    test_math.zolo