rant 4.0.0-alpha.14

The Rant procedural templating language
Documentation

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Rant is a high-level language for procedural templating, providing a powerful toolset for easily creating code templates, dynamic game dialogue, stories, name generators, test data, and much more.

WARNING:

This project is in alpha. Expect to see broken/missing features.

While I encourage you to try it out and give feedback, please do not use in production environments until a stable version is released.

Features may appear or disappear at any time for any reason. Assume that every alpha release will be breaking.

Introducing Rant 4

Rant 4 is a complete redesign and reimplementation from the ground up, written in Rust. It's designed around the needs of everyone-- programmers, writers, and everyone in-between!

Intuitive syntax

Rant is basically the opposite of Regex: just as a regular expression compares inputs to a pattern, Rant generates matching outputs from a pattern!

Consider this regex:

# Matching inputs:
#  - "Hey world!"
#  - "Hi world!"
#  - "Hello world!"

(Hey|Hi|Hello) world!

The Rant equivalent is nearly identical:

{Hey|Hi|Hello} world!

# Possible outputs:
#  - "Hey world!"
#  - "Hi world!"
#  - "Hello world!"

Features

  • Pain-Free API: Rant's API is designed to be as straightforward as possible. Integrating Rant into your project only takes a few lines of code!
  • Rant Standard Library: Rant's comprehensive standard library lets you get more done and iterate rapidly with far less boilerplate than other languages.
  • Branching on Steroids: Diversify your output with a multitude of branch selection modes, including several built-in randomization modes.
  • Dynamic Variable System: Inspired by other popular languages, Rant's built-in primitive and collection types let you represent whatever data you need.
  • Automatic Formatting: Passively format text output with automatic capitalization, whitespace normalization, and number formatting.
  • Entanglement: Synchronize RNG behavior in different parts of your program with a single function call.
  • Modules: Create libraries of Rant functions to easily share between your programs.
  • Fully Cross-Platform: Rant code is fully portable. Write once and run on any supported platform!

Getting started

CLI

Rant comes with a CLI tool that includes a REPL. You can install and run it with:

$ cargo install rant --version=4.0.0-alpha.14 --features=cli
$ rant

Library

Add Rant to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
rant = "*"

You can run a Rant program with just a few lines of code:

use rant::Rant;
use std::error::Error;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
  // Create a default Rant context
  let mut rant = Rant::new();

  // Compile a simple program
  let program = rant.compile_quiet(r#"
  [$greet:name] {
    {Hello|Hi|Hey} <name>!
  }
  [greet:world]
  "#)?;

  // Run the program and print the output
  let output = rant.run(&program)?;
  println!("{}", output);

  Ok(())
}

Documentation

The latest reference documentation can be found at docs.rant-lang.org.

Since Rant 4 is early in development, some documentation may be outdated/incomplete, but it is actively updated to ensure that it reflects current features with reasonable accuracy.

Changelog

The changelog is updated constantly throughout the development process, providing a complete summary of upcoming changes at a glance even before the next release.

License

Rant is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. See LICENSE for more details.

An alternative, commercial license is planned for the future.