Questions tagged [hacklang]

What is Hack?

Find complete documentation at http://www.hacklang.org/

Hack is a open source programming language for HHVM that interoperates seamlessly with PHP, it was invented by Facebook. Hack reconciles the fast development cycle of PHP with the discipline provided by static typing, while adding many features commonly found in other modern programming languages.

Hack provides instantaneous type checking via a local server that watches the filesystem. It typically runs in less than 200 milliseconds, making it easy to integrate into your development workflow without introducing a noticeable delay.

The following are some of the important language features of Hack. For more information, see the full documentation, or follow through the quick interactive tutorial.

• Type Annotations allow for PHP code to be explicitly typed on parameters, class member variables and return values:

  <?hh
  class MyClass {
    const int MyConst = 0;
    private string $x = '';
    public function increment(int $x): int {
      $y = $x + 1;
      return $y;
    }
  }
  

• Generics allow classes and methods to be parameterized (i.e., a type associated when a class is instantiated or a method is called) in the same vein as statically type languages like C# and Java):

  <?hh
  class Box<T> {
    protected T $data;
  
    public function __construct(T $data) {
      $this->data = $data;
    }
  
    public function getData(): T {
      return $this->data;
    }
  }
  

• Nullable Types are supported by Hack through use of the ? operator. This introduces a safer way to deal with nulls and is very useful for primitive types that don’t generally allow null as one of their values, such as bool and int (using ?bool and ?int respectively). The operand be used on any type or class.

• Collections enhance the experience of working with PHP arrays, by providing first class, built-in parameterized types such as Vector (an ordered, index-based list), Map (an ordered dictionary), Set (a list of unique values), and Pair (an index-based collection of exactly two elements).

• Lambdas offer similar functionality to PHP closures, but they capture variables from the enclosing function body implicitly and are less verbose:

  <?hh
  function foo(): (function(string): string) {
    $x = 'bar';
    return $y ==> $x . $y;
  }
  function test(): void {
    $fn = foo();
    echo $fn('baz'); // barbaz
  }
  

Other significant features of Hack include Shapes, Type Aliasing, Async support, and much more.