One of the basic kinds of data in Grace (and everywhere else) are Numbers. You can use operators like +, -, *, /, etc., on them, as you might expect.
Another one of the basic kinds of data in both Grace and other programming languages
is text. The representation of text in Grace is called a String, and
is shown through the use of double quotes. For example, "I am a string".
You can add, or concatenate, two Strings together using ++, as shown
here "string1" ++ "string2" to make "string1string2".
Both Numbers and Strings are Objects; this means that they have methods
associated with them, and that you can request that they execute those methods.
+, -, * etc are actually methods in Grace; you request them by writing
expressions using operator symbols, like (3 + 4) * 2, very much as in mathematics.
Other method have names, like isEven, floor, truncated, or abs; you request
these
using dot notation.
var a := -7.6 // requsts the prefix - method on 7.6
print (a.abs) // requests the absolute value method on a
var b := "hello"
print (b.first) // requests the `first` method of b, which returns its first letter
Try experimenting with other methods for Numbers and Strings below (like rounded for Numbers and asUpper for Strings).
Two usful but slightly unusual methods on numbers are ÷, which performs
integer division, and %, which returns the remainder after integer division.
For any Divident D and divisor d`, it’s always true that
def q = D ÷ d
def r = D % d
D == ((d*q) + r)
Here are the complete lists of all the methods on Numbers and Strings.