Conditionals

TinyPanda handles conditional logic using the iff and otherwise keywords.

Unlike many traditional languages where conditionals are structural statements, conditionals in TinyPanda are expressions. This means they always evaluate to a value that can be assigned or used directly.

Basic Syntax

An iff conditional checks a condition. If it evaluates to true, the code block inside the first set of curly braces executes.

syntax: iff (<condition>) { <statements> } otherwise { <statements> }

bamboo isHungry = true;

iff (isHungry) {
    echoln("Time to eat bamboo!");
} otherwise {
    echoln("Time to sleep.");
}

TinyPanda requires explicit curly braces {} for both branches, even if they only contain a single line of code.

Truthy vs Falsy Values

TinyPanda has incredibly simple rules for evaluating conditions: Only the boolean literal false is falsy expression.

Absolutely everything else evaluates to true. This includes numbers like 0, 1, -10, or strings like "tinypanda" and even empty strings "".

iff (0) { echoln("0 is True!"); }
iff (99) { echoln("99 is True!"); }
iff (-42) { echoln("-42 is True!"); }
iff ("panda") { echoln("string is True!"); }
iff ("") { echoln("empty string is True!"); }
iff (false) {
    echoln("false is truthy value");
} otherwise {
    echoln("false is falsy value");
}

/* Outputs:
0 is True!
99 is True!
-42 is True!
string is True!
empty string is True!
false is falsy value
*/

Conditionals as Expressions

Because iff-otherwise structures are expressions, they return a final value. The value of the last line executed inside the chosen block becomes the overall result of the conditional.

You can assign this result directly to a bamboo variable:

bamboo age = 15;

bamboo isAdult = iff (age > 18) {
    "You are adult";
} otherwise {
    "Your are not adult";
};

echoln(isAdult); // Outputs: Your are not adult