I’m making a language with a lot of inspiration from rust and was experimenting with alternative enum syntax. It relies on literals to be types in order to convey information on the different options.

I don’t really get on well with Typescript but having the ability to use literals as types is something I really liked as a lot of the times I use static string literals as errors. and having all the variants upcast through types makes it easier to do pattern matching.

Plain-text transcription of the image:

// using rust like enum syntax
Option<T> (
  | "Some" T
  | "None"
)

fn match_demo() {
  let some_option = Option "Some" "text";
  let none_option = Option "None";

  match some_option {
    "Some" "hello" => print("oh hi there"),
    "Some" text => print("Option is {text}"),
    "None" => print("Option is {text}"),
  }
}

// Or maybe more experimental syntax
Option<T> (
  | T
  | ()
)

fn match_demo2() {
  let opt = Option "something";
  match opt {
    "text" => "matching directly",
    var => "bind to variable",
    () => "nothing",
  }
}