Using REPL

Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL) is an interactive shell or the language shell that provides the functionality to test out pieces of code. Julia provides an interactive shell with a JIT compiler (used by Julia) at the backend. We can give input in a line, it is compiled and evaluated, and the result is given in the next line:

Julia's shell can be started easily, just by writing Julia in the Terminal. This brings up the logo and information about the version. This julia> is a Julia prompt and we can write expressions, statements, and functions, just as we could write them in a code file. The benefit of having the REPL is that we can test out our code for possible errors. Also, it is a good environment for beginners. We can type in the expressions and press Enter key to evaluate them. A Julia library, or custom-written Julia program, can be included in REPL using include. 

For example, let's create a file with the name hello.jl and write a function with the name helloworld(), which just prints the line Hello World from hello.jl:

Now, use this function inside the REPL by writing an include statement for the specified file:

When we include the file inside the REPL, we see that it gave the information about the function present inside the file. We used the function and it printed the desired line. Julia also stores all the commands written in the REPL in the .julia_history folder. This file is located at  C:\Users\%username% on Windows, or ~/.julia_history on Linux or macOS. Similar to Linux Terminal, we can reverse-search using Ctrl + R keys in Julia's shell. This helps us to find the previous commands or to debug the errors if necessary.

Using help in Julia

There is another nice feature provided in the REPL of Julia, which is help. One can use this by typing a question mark (?) and the prompt will change to:

help?>

It is used to give information about the functions, types, macros, and operators used in Julia:

In the preceding screenshot, we used help?> to give information about the include and "+" key (please read the information provided for "+" key).

Julia also provides the functionality to use regular shell commands from REPL. This can be used by writing ";" key inside the REPL, which will change the prompt to:

shell>

In the preceding screenshot, we used the ls command (dir in Windows) to list the files in the current directory and did a ping to 8.8.8.8.  This is helpful, as we don't have to leave the REPL for tasks that we need to do on the Terminal. Tab-completion works fine in shell> mode too, as it does in julia> mode. There are some interactive functions and macros available, which increase the productivity from the REPL:

• whos(): This gives information about the global symbols currently present:

We can see it also gives the size of the module.

• @which: It gives the information about the method that would be called for the particular function and arguments:

     julia> @which sin(10)
     sin(x::Real) at math.jl:204

•  versioninfo(): Although when we start the Julia REPL, it gives some information about the version, if we want more detailed information, then versioninfo() is used:

     julia> versioninfo()
     Julia Version 0.5.0
     Commit 3c9d753 (2016-09-19 18:14 UTC)
     Platform Info:
       System: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
       CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
       WORD_SIZE: 64
       BLAS: libopenblas (NO_LAPACKE DYNAMIC_ARCH NO_AFFINITY 
       Haswell)
       LAPACK: liblapack.so.3
       LIBM: libopenlibm
       LLVM: libLLVM-3.7.1 (ORCJIT, broadwell)

• edit("any_file_in_home_directory"):  This is used to edit a file in the home directory.

Let's edit the same file that we used in the earlier examples:

julia> edit("hello.jl")

 

This brings up a default editor based on the OS being used, like Vim.

• @edit rand(): If required, we can also edit the definition of the built-in functions. This will bring up a similar window as the preceding one, which is for the default editor.
• less("any_file_in_same_directory"): This is similar to the shell utility for showing the file.
• clipboard("some_text"): This is used to copy some_text to the system clipboard.
• clipboard(): This is used to paste the contents of the keyboard to the REPL. Useful when copying some commands from elsewhere to the REPL.
• dump(): This displays information about a Julia object on the screen.
• names(): This gets an array of the names exported by a module.
• fieldnames(): This is used to get the array of the data fields belonging to a particular symbol.
• workspace(): This brings out a clean workspace (all user defined variables are erased) and cleans up the top-level module (Main).

Plots in REPL

There is also the possibility to create plots in REPL. These are simple plots, but look quite nice and are very light on memory. To do this, we need to add a package. We will study package management later, but for now, we can directly add a package and start using it.

julia> Pkg.add("UnicodePlots")

This has been provided by a developer called Christof Stocker. Remember how to enter the symbol "π"? If yes, then please go through the previous sections. Let's use this to create a simple plot:

We can create many similar plots such as scatterplots, line plots, histograms, and so on using UnicodePlots.