Standard Library

The standard library is Mew, not compiler machinery. It ships beside the compiler as .mew source, and every file in it is loaded into every compilation, so nothing in it needs a #load.

Being loaded is not the same as being in scope without a prefix. Those are decided separately: the shipped folder decides what is loaded, and each file's namespace decides what it is called. A few declarations are in the global namespace and are reachable by their own name; everything else is namespaced under std, and is reached either by qualifying it or by importing it with use.

use std.convert;

println(itoa(42));               // imported, so no prefix
println(std.convert.itoa(42));   // the same call, qualified

Always in scope

These are in the global namespace, so they need neither a #load nor a use.

Signature	Does
print(value: string) -> void	Writes the text, with no line break
println(value: string) -> void	Writes the text, followed by a line break

println("Hello, world!");

print("no newline here");
println("");

Both take text, so anything else is turned into text first. Interpolation is how, and it is the only way a value becomes text, so what a program prints reads the same wherever it was written.

let name = "world";
let count = 3;

println($"{name} has {count}");
println($"{count}");

A value whose type is any cannot be printed. Interpolation has no text for it either, so say what it is first.

let boxed: any = 3;

println($"{boxed as i32}");

Enumerable<T> and Enumerator<T> are also global, because for resolves them by name. They are described under loops.

std.convert

Conversions between text and numbers.

Signature	Does
itoa(value: i32) -> string	The text of an i32
atoi(value: string) -> i32	The i32 a string spells

use std.convert;

let text = itoa(42);
let number = atoi("42");

atoi answers 0 for anything it cannot read, including the empty string and text with a trailing remainder, so atoi("12abc") is 0 rather than 12.

Printing a number needs neither of these. Interpolation already turns one into text, and itoa is for when the text itself is the value you want.

Native code

Some of the library cannot be written in Mew, and that part is a native library called mewstd that ships with the compiler. println and atoi reach it through the foreign function interface exactly as your own code would, with no privilege the language does not give you.

info

This surface is expected to change, and to grow. What belongs in the language, in the library that ships with it, and in a package someone installs has not been settled, so treat this as what exists today rather than as a stable surface.