Rockstars need freedom. Sometimes for necessities, sometimes just for fun, but a rocker always revolting against the rules or at least breaking some boundaries. So, Rocky offers some features that are not available in the supported Rockstar specification.
By default, Rocky recognises whether strict or extension mode should be allowed (from the presence of import or album statements). To explicitly enable Rocky features, add -X or --rocky as a command-line parameter.
There is a separate page to introduce Rockstar Object-Oriented Programming.
There is a separate page about Native Java support in Rocky. Shortly: it is possible to call native Java methods from Rockstar and using a FunctionalInterface Java classes can call back to Rockstar. Values are automatically converted to and from Java.
Array iteration is the extension of the while loop. There are two similar statements for list iteration (while ... alike ...) and associative array iteration (while ... alike ... for ...).
Aliases: while ... as ... and while ... as ... for ...
('the army' is an integer-indexed array)
While the army alike my warrior
('my warrior' is the current value)
The cycle traverses through all array elements in increasing index order.
('the members' is an associative array)
While the members alike the man for the role
('the role' is the key, 'the man' is the value)
The cycle traverses through all key-value elements in increasing key order. Keys are compared according to the default comparison rules (e.g. string are alphabetically increasing, numbers are arithmetically increasing, etc).
The built-in function sorted creates a new array, that contains all the elements of the original array, ordered. Can be used in prefix or postfix format.
The following lines are identical:
('the colors' is an integer-indexed array)
Let the rainbow be sorted the colors
Let the rainbow be the colors sorted
Arrays can be sliced with my array [since X] [till Y] expression. Both since and till part are optional (and can even be swapped). Indexing starts with 0, the start of the slice is inclusive, the end of the slice is exclusive. Invalid indexing causes runtime error.
('the colors' is an integer-indexed array)
morning is the colors till 6 (morning is an array, elements 0-5 of teh original array)
The built-in function count of returns the number of elements in an array. Aliases: length of, height of.
Say height of the rainbow
The built-in function last of returns the last element in an array.
Say last of the colors
The all keys of X and all values of X functions return the key set and the value set of an associative array X. Note that the sets are unsorted.
As per the original Rockstar specification, Rocky fully supports DEC64 arithmetic with --dec64 command line option (including rounding functions).
Rocky supports infinite-precision arithmetics using Java BigDecimal type with --bigdecimal command line option (including rounding functions).
If you want to express yourself as you want, you can redefine many language elements using the means keyword:
Growl means Say
growl "Hello there!"
Aliasing operates on whole keyword level only. For example throw back means give back works, but throw means give does not.
All keywords in statements can be aliased. From expressions, it only works for the keyword taking currently (but may be extended).
It's possible to define the same alias for different keywords, if their lexical position is different. For example:
telling means say
telling means taking
telling "Hello!" ("say")
Desire telling my love ("taking")
It is also allowed to redefine keywords (though not recommended), but it's not possible to redefine other aliases.