Chapter 2. Nickle Basics

Nickle is a powerful desktop calculator language with many features of advanced languages and support for arbitrary precision numbers. It can run interactively to fulfill its role as a calculator, evaluate single expressions, and execute Nickle scripts. It also has an array of useful top-level commands for interacting with the interpreter.

2.1. Invocation

nickle [-f file] [-l file] [-e expr] [script] [--] [arg ...]

-f

Evaluate file.

-l

Evaluate file like -f, but expect it to be in $NICKLEPATH.

-e

Evaluate a Nickle expression, e.g.

$ nickle -e 3**4
81
$

script

If Nickle encounters an unflagged argument, it assumes it to be the name of a script, which it runs. If a .nicklerc file is available, it will be evaluated first. No more arguments are processed; the rest of the line is given to the script as its arguments.

Without -e or a script as an argument, Nickle runs interactively, accepting standard input and writing to standard output.