📄️ About the 4D Language
The 4D built-in language, consisting of more than 1300 commands, makes 4D a powerful development tool for web, mobile, or desktop applications. You can use the 4D language for many different tasks—from performing simple calculations to creating complex custom user interfaces. For example, you can:
📄️ A Quick Tour
Using the 4D language, printing the traditional "Hello, world!" message on screen can be done in several ways. The most simple is probably to write the following single line in a project method:
📄️ Operators
An operator is a symbol or a group of symbols that you use to check, modify, or combine values. You are already familiar with many operators. For example, 1 + 2 uses the addition (or plus sign) operator to add two numbers together, and the result is 3. Comparison operators, like = or >, let you compare two or more values.
🗃️ Data Types
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📄️ Variables
Data in 4D is stored in two fundamentally different ways. Fields store data permanently on disk; variables store data temporarily in memory.
📄️ Arrays
An array is an ordered series of variables of the same type. Each variable is called an element of the array. An array is given its size when it is created; you can then resize it as many times as needed by adding, inserting, or deleting elements, or by resizing the array using the same command used to create it. Array elements are numbered from 1 to N, where N is the size of the array. An array always has a special element zero. Arrays are 4D variables. Like any variable, an array has a scope and follows the rules of the 4D language, though with some unique differences.
📄️ Methods
A method is basically a piece of code that executes one or several action(s). A method is composed of statements.
📄️ Parameters
You'll often find that you need to pass data to your methods and functions. This is easily done with parameters.
📄️ Shared objects and collections
Shared objects and shared collections are specific objects and collections whose contents are shared between processes. In contrast to interprocess variables, shared objects and shared collections have the advantage of being compatible with preemptive 4D processes: they can be passed by reference as parameters to commands such as New process or CALL WORKER.
📄️ Classes
Overview
📄️ Commands
The 4D language contains a large number of built-in commands, allowing the developer to perform a wide range of actions.
📄️ Control flow
Regardless of the simplicity or complexity of a method or function, you will always use one or more of three types of programming structures. Programming structures control the flow of execution, whether and in what order statements are executed within a method. There are three types of structures:
📄️ Error handling
Error handling is the process of anticipating and responding to errors that might occur in your application. 4D provides a comprehensive support for catching and reporting errors at runtime, as well as for investigating their conditions.
📄️ Interpreted and Compiled modes
4D applications can work in interpreted or compiled mode:
📄️ Components
A 4D component is a set of 4D code and forms representing one or more functionalities that you can install and use in your projects. For example, the 4D SVG component adds advanced commands and an integrated rendering engine that can be used to display SVG files.
📄️ Plug-ins
As you develop a 4D application, you will discover many capabilities that you did not notice when you started. You can even augment the standard version of 4D by adding plug-ins to your 4D development environment.
📄️ Identifiers
This section describes the conventions and rules for naming various elements in the 4D language (variables, object properties, tables, forms, etc.).
📄️ Pathnames
File and Folder functions, properties, and commands allow you to handle files and folders as objects. This makes file and folder management powerful and flexible. For example, to create a new file in the current user's Documents folder, you can write: