Getting Started

ABS is a programming language that works best when you're scripting on your terminal. It tries to combine the elegance of languages such as Python, or Ruby, to the convenience of Bash.

tz = `cat /etc/timezone`;
continent, city = tz.split("/")

echo("Best city in the world?")

selection = stdin()

if selection == city {
  echo("You might be biased...")
}

See it in action:

(opens new window)

Let's now try to fetch our IP address and print the sum of its parts, if its higher than 100. Here's how you could do it in Bash:

# Simple program that fetches your IP and sums it up
RES=`curl -s 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json' || "ERR"`

if [ "$RES" = "ERR" ]; then
    echo "An error occurred"
    exit 1
fi

IP=`echo $RES | jq -r ".ip"`
IFS=. read first second third fourth <<EOF
${IP##*-}
EOF

total=$((first + second + third + fourth))
if [ $total -gt 100 ]; then
    echo "The sum of [$IP] is a large number, $total."
fi

And here's how you could write the same code in ABS:

# Simple program that fetches your IP and sums it up
res = `curl -s 'https://api.ipify.org?format=json'`

if !res.ok {
  exit(1, "An error occurred: %s".fmt(res))
}

ip = res.json().ip
total = ip.split(".").map(int).sum()
if total > 100 {
    echo("The sum of [$ip] is a large number, $total.")
}

Wondering how you can run this code? Simply grab the latest release (opens new window) and run:

$ abs script.abs

You can also install ABS with the 1-command installer:

bash <(curl https://www.abs-lang.org/installer.sh)