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A Friendly WFL Tour 🧭

Eight tiny programs that take you from "Hello, World!" to objects — each one runs today on the release build and prints exactly what you see below. They live in this folder as real .wfl files, so you can run them yourself:

cargo build --release
target/release/wfl TestPrograms/docs_examples/tour/01_hello.wfl

Every example here was run against the release binary, and the code blocks below match each program's real output. You can re-verify them yourself with the docs harness pointed at this folder:

python3 scripts/test_docs_code_blocks.py --docs TestPrograms/docs_examples/tour

Read them in order — each builds on the last, and nothing you learn early has to be unlearned later.

1. Hello, World! — 01_hello.wfl

One line, no ceremony. display prints a line of text.

display "Hello, World!"

Hello, World!

2. Variables — 02_variables.wfl

store makes a variable; change updates it. Types are inferred, and you can join values with with. Booleans are the friendly words yes / no.

store name as "Alice"
store age as 30
store is_member as yes

display "Name: " with name
display "Age: " with age
display "Member? " with is_member
display "age is a " with typeof of age

change age to age plus 1
display "Next year: " with age

Name: Alice
Age: 30
Member? yes
age is a Number
Next year: 31

Tip: is is a keyword, so name booleans is_member, not is member.

3. Conditionals — 03_conditionals.wfl

Comparisons are words (is greater than or equal to). To chain choices, nest the next check inside otherwise:.

store score as 82

check if score is greater than or equal to 90:
    display "Grade: A"
otherwise:
    check if score is greater than or equal to 80:
        display "Grade: B"
    otherwise:
        display "Grade: C or below"
    end check
end check

Grade: B

4. Loops — 04_loops.wfl

Three shapes: count from … to … (loop variable is count), for each … in …, and repeat while ….

display "Counting to 3:"
count from 1 to 3:
    display "  count is " with count
end count

store fruits as ["apple", "banana", "cherry"]
display "Fruits:"
for each fruit in fruits:
    display "  " with fruit
end for

store n as 3
repeat while n is greater than 0:
    display "  liftoff in " with n
    change n to n minus 1
end repeat
display "  liftoff!"

Counting to 3:
  count is 1
  count is 2
  count is 3
Fruits:
  apple
  banana
  cherry
  liftoff in 3
  liftoff in 2
  liftoff in 1
  liftoff!

5. Lists — 05_lists.wfl

create list …: (note the colon) or a […] literal. Append with push with <list> and <value>. Here we collect the even numbers.

create list evens:
end list

count from 1 to 10:
    store remainder as count % 2
    check if remainder is equal to 0:
        push with evens and count
    end check
end count

display "Even numbers 1..10: " with evens
display "How many: " with length of evens

Even numbers 1..10: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
How many: 5

Tip: compute count % 2 into a variable first — count % 2 is equal to 0 written inline currently mis-groups (see issue #571).

6. Actions — 06_actions.wfl

Define with with parameters …. Call a value-returning action with of (area of 4 and 5); run a side-effecting one as a statement with call.

define action called area with parameters width and height:
    return width times height
end action

define action called greet with parameters who:
    display "Hello, " with who with "!"
end action

display "Area 4x5 = " with area of 4 and 5
call greet with "world"

Area 4x5 = 20
Hello, world!

Tip: area with 4 and 5 does not call the action — with is string concatenation. Use of.

7. Error handling — 07_errors.wfl

Wrap risky work in try: and catch it with when error:. The caught message is available as error_message. Execution continues afterward.

try:
    store result as 10 divided by 0
    display "result: " with result
when error:
    display "Caught an error: " with error_message
end try

display "Program continues after the error."

Caught an error: Division by zero
Program continues after the error.

8. Containers (objects) — 08_containers.wfl

Declare property name: Type and action …: … end; close the container with a bare end. Build an instance with create new … as …: and call methods with parentheses.

create container Dog:
    property name: Text
    property tricks: Number

    action show_info:
        display name with " knows " with tricks with " tricks."
    end
end

create new Dog as rex:
    name is "Rex"
    tricks is 3
end

rex.show_info()

Rex knows 3 tricks.

Where to next? The full guides live in Docs/. Start with 01 Introduction and 03 Language Basics — their runnable examples have been executed against this same binary. A few blocks in those sections are intentional error demos or <placeholder> templates; the current per-file status is tracked in DOC_CODE_AUDIT.md.