Enums

Rune has support for enumerations. These allow you to define a type with zero or more variants, where each variant can hold a distinct set of data.

In a dynamic programming language enums might not seem quite as useful, but it's important for Rune to support them to have a level of feature parity with Rust.

Even so, in this section we'll explore some cases where enums are useful.

The Option enum

Rune has native support for Option, the same enum available in Rust that allows you to represent data that can either be present with Option::Some, or absent with Option::None.

use std::iter::range;

fn count_numbers(limit) {
    let limit = limit.unwrap_or(10);

    for n in range(0, limit) {
        println!("Count: {}", n);
    }
}

pub fn main() {
    println("First count!");
    count_numbers(None);

    println("Second count!");
    count_numbers(Some(2));
}

$> cargo run --bin rune -- run scripts/book/enums/count_numbers.rn
First count!
Count: 0
Count: 1
Count: 2
Count: 3
Count: 4
Count: 5
Count: 6
Count: 7
Count: 8
Count: 9
Second count!
Count: 0
Count: 1
== () (9.0745ms)

Using an Option allows us to easily model the scenario where we have an optional function parameter, with a default fallback value.

In the next section we'll be looking into a control flow construct which gives Option superpowers.

The try operator.