Zig (programming language)

Zig

Paradigms	Multi-paradigm: imperative, concurrent, procedural, functional
Designed by	Andrew Kelley
First appeared	8 February 2016 (2016-02-08)
Preview release	0.13.0  / 6 June 2024 (6 June 2024)
Typing discipline	Static, strong, inferred, structural, generic
Platform	x86-64, ARM, MIPS, IA-32, WebAssembly, RISC-V
OS	Cross-platform
License	MIT License
Filename extensions	.zig, .zir
Website	ziglang.org
Influenced by
C, C++, LLVM IR, Go, Rust, JavaScript

Zig is an imperative, general-purpose, statically typed, compiled system programming language designed by Andrew Kelley. The language is designed for "robustness, optimality and maintainability", supporting compile-time generics, reflection and evaluation, cross-compilation and manual memory management. A major goal of the language is to improve upon the C language, while also taking inspiration from Rust, among others. Zig has many features for low-level programming, notably packed structs (structs without padding between fields), arbitrary width integers and multiple pointer types.

The stage 1 compiler is written in Zig and C++, using LLVM 13 as a back-end, supporting many of its native targets. The compiler is open source under the MIT License. The Zig compiler exposes the ability to compile C and C++ similarly to Clang with the commands "zig cc" and "zig c++", providing many headers including libc and libcxx for many different platforms, allowing Zig's cc and c++ sub-commands to act as cross compilers out of the box.

Zig development is funded by the Zig Software Foundation (ZSF), a non-profit corporation with Andrew Kelley as president, which takes in donations and hires multiple full-time employees.

Examples

Hello World

const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() !void {
    const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer();
    try stdout.print("Hello, {s}!\n", .{"world"});
}

Generic linked list

pub fn main() void {
    var node = LinkedList(i32).Node {
        .prev = null,
        .next = null,
        .data = 1234,
    };

    var list = LinkedList(i32) {
        .first = &node,
        .last = &node,
        .len = 1,
    };
}

fn LinkedList(comptime T: type) type {
    return struct {
        pub const Node = struct {
            prev: ?*Node,
            next: ?*Node,
            data: T,
        };

        first: ?*Node,
        last:  ?*Node,
        len:   usize,
    };
}

See also

• C
• C++
• Nim
• Rust
• D

External links

• Official website
• Zig on GitHub
• Movie: Introducing Zig
• Movie: The Road to 1.0