By Andrew J. Wozniewicz
Milwaukee, August 8, 2008

Somewhat counterintuitive to a Pascal programmer is the fact that the order of declarations does not matter in WANTScript.

For example, variables can be used in statements before they are declared (in terms of their position in the script file). This is possible, because WANTScript interpreter - unlike the Pascal compiler - is multi-pass and can resolve the names that are defined further down in the source file, as long as they are defined at all.

Here is a simple example that illustrates this point:

project Test040
  WriteLn("The answer is: ",X)
  WriteLn("What was the question?")

  var X := TheUltimateAnswer
  const TheUltimateAnswer = 42
end

Notice how the declarations occur in exactly the opposite order to what you would expect in a Pascal program. The variable X is referred to in the first statement (WriteLn), even though it is declared two statements below. WANTScript behaves more like C/C++ in this regard.

The output, of course, is:

The answer is: 42
What was the question?

In general, identifiers declared in a module have visibility in the entire module, including any embedded modules.

Technically, at this point of the language evolution (this will undoubtedly change), all identifiers have public visibility, that is, they are also visible outside the module in which they are defined, but the references to them must either be fully qualified (prefixed with the complete module path), or their enclosing module must be explicitly imported.

Here is another example that involves an embedded module (a procedure):

program Test044

  //The scope of a variable is the entire module
  //in which it is defined, including any contained
  // modules

  TestInner
  WriteLn(H," and ", G)

  procedure TestInner
    H := H + '!'
    WriteLn('Variables can be defined after they are used: ',H)
    WriteLn('As long as they are in scope: ',G)
  end

  var H = "Hello"
  var G = "Goodbye!"

end

The output of this program is

Variables can be defined after they are used: Hello!
As long as they are in scope: Goodbye!
Hello! and Goodbye!

-Andrew