Literals

Numbers

• Int! — decimal, signed 64-bit
• Float! — 3.14, 1.5e10, 2.5e-3 (a digit must precede and follow the .; exponent e/E with optional sign)
• no hex/octal/binary literals — decimal only

Booleans

• true, false

Null

• null literal
• only assignable to nullable type positions

String literals

Double-quoted

• "hello", single-line (no raw newline), with escapes: \a \b \f \n \r \t \v \" \\, \ooo (octal), \xNN, \uNNNN, \UNNNNNNNN; \/ is accepted and yields /

Triple-quoted

• """...""", multi-line, raw content (escape sequences are NOT processed), dedents by minimum indent
• a leading and trailing newline adjacent to the """ fences is stripped (so """\nhello\n""" == "hello")
• canonical form for docstrings (see Syntax)

Backtick templates

• `hello ${name}!` — single-line, ${...} interpolation
• ```...``` — multi-line; same minimum-indent dedent as triple-quoted; fences grow (4+ backticks) to wrap shorter backtick blocks, and the close fence must match the open fence length
• only escape is \${ → literal ${; every other backslash is literal (`\d+` stays \d+). A lone $ not followed by { is literal.
• interpolated expressions are auto-stringified like Strings toString (non-strings JSON-encode; null → "null")
• optional language tag (parsed but does not affect the value): ```go ... ```

Lists

• [1, 2, 3], ["a", "b"], [] (empty)
• nested: [[1, 2], [3]]
• empty list needs a type hint to pin its element type: [] :: [String!]! (also [] :: [String!], [] :: [String]). It can still be compared directly: xs == [].

Objects (record literals)

• {{ key: value, other: value }}
• always non-null
• the same {{ ... }} syntax is also a record type annotation: x :: {{foo: Int!, bar: Status!}}!
• nestable: {{user: {{id: 1, active: true}}, count: 100}}
• serialized to JSON with keys sorted alphabetically, not declaration order (see JSON and YAML): {{count: 100, user: ...}} → {"count":100,"user":...}