Description of Various Brightscript Language References

Posted By : Rupesh Sharma | 20-Oct-2018

  Basic BrightScript Statement

We will discuss here a basic brightscript statement in order to build Roku application.

BrightScript is a powerful scripting language that supports a lightweight library of brightscript objects, that enables it to build media and networked applications for embedded devices. Various BrightScript Language references:

1. Identifiers: It specifies providing names of variables, functions, object or functions etc.

The following rules are followed for identifiers

  • it must start with an alphabetic character (a-z) or “_”
  • it may consist of alphabetic characters, numbers or symbol(“_”)
  • not case sensitive
  • can have any length
  • should not use reserved words
  • may end with designator character(optional) like(% for integer, $ for string, ! for float, # for double) .

2. Comments: We can use an apostrophe (‘) or the statement REM for commenting out the statements or code in the syntax. For example: Adding an explanatory description in order to brief it for reading purpose -

             centX=(230-examp.width)/2     ‘ control horizontal alignment of button group
             centY=(230-examp.height)/2     ‘ control vertical alignment of button group
         

3. Types: Brightscript uses dynamic typing i.e variable can also be determined at runtime. Now, brightscript also has declared types which means the variable can also be specified for containing a value of a specific type.

The various supported types in brightscript are:

  • Boolean- Either false or true Integer- 32 bit signed integer number
  • LongInteger- 64 bit signed integer number
  • Float- 32 bit IEEE floating point number
  • Double- 64 bit IEEE floating point number
  • String- A sequence of Unicode characters.
  • Object- A reference to components of brightscript. For example- “roArray”, “roList”, “roAssociativeArray” etc
  • Function- These are an intrinsic type, can be stored in variables and passed to functions.
  • Interface- A brightscript component.
  • Invalid- This type has only one value: invalid.

4. Function Literals:

Array literals: The array operator[] is used to declare an array to store values.

newArray=[]                                           ‘ an empty array
newArray=[2,4,8,16]                              ‘ array of four members
newArray=[x+10, 3<>2, false]               ‘ array of three members 

An array can be specified in a multi-line form

r=[
    “chair”
    “table” ]

Associative Literals: The associative array can be defined by using {} operator. It can contain expressions of literals

rr={}
rr={key1: “value1”, key2: “9090”, key3: 5+6}

Associative arrays can also be specified in a multi-line form

rr={
  MyNewFun: xFunction
  MyVal1 : “my new value”
}

5. Function: The function call operator “()” is used to call a function. Example-

   function showNumber() ass Integer
          return 120
   end function
 
   print showNumber()
   numbers = showNumber
   print numbers()
   arr[1] = numbers	
   print arr[1]()

In this way the language references are used to specify syntax in brightscript.

About Author

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Rupesh Sharma

Rupesh Sharma is a trainee here as an assistant consultant developer. His core interest is in java and posses good analytical and logical skills. He likes to learn new technology and will be to glad to get feedbacks for improvement.

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