Executes a system command and returns the output as a MacroId. Gives a compile-time error if the command failed to execute.

Compares two semantic versions. Returns -1 if v1 < v2, 0 if v1 == v2 and 1 if v1 > v2.

{{ compare_versions("1.10.0", "1.2.0") }} # => 1

Outputs the current macro's buffer to the standard output. Useful for debugging a macro to see what's being generated. Use it like {{debug()}}, the parenthesis are mandatory.

By default, the output is tried to be formatted using Crystal's formatter, but you can disable this by passing false to this method.

Gets the value of an environment variable at compile-time, or nil if it doesn't exist.

Same as #puts.

Prints an AST node at compile-time. Useful for debugging macros.

Gives a compile-time error with the given message.

Compiles and execute a Crystal program and returns its output as a MacroId.

The file denote by filename must be a valid Crystal program. This macro invocation passes args to the program as regular program arguments. The program must output a valid Crystal expression. This output is the result of this macro invocation, as a MacroId.

The #run macro is useful when the subset of available macro methods are not enough for your purposes and you need something more powerful. With #run you can read files at compile time, connect to the internet or to a database.

A simple example:

# read.cr
puts File.read(ARGV[0])

# main.cr
macro read_file_at_compile_time(filename)
  {{ run("./read", filename).stringify }}
end

puts read_file_at_compile_time("some_file.txt")

The above generates a program that will have the contents of some_file.txt. The file, however, is read at compile time and will not be needed at runtime.

NOTE the compiler is allowed to cache the executable generated for filename and only recompile it if any of the files it depends on changes (their modified time). This is why it's strongly discouraged to use a program for #run that changes in subsequent compilations (for example, if it executes shell commands at compile time, or other macro run programs). It's also strongly discouraged to have a macro run program take a lot of time, because this will slow down compilation times. Reading files is OK, opening an HTTP connection at compile-time will most likely result if very slow compilations.

Skips the rest of the file from which it is executed. Typical usage is to skip files that have platform specific code, without having to surround the most relevant code in {%...%} macro blocks.

Example:

# sth_for_osx.cr
{% skip() unless flag?(:darwin) %}

# Class FooForMac will only be defined if we're compiling on OS X
class FooForMac
end

Executes a system command and returns the output as a MacroId. Gives a compile-time error if the command failed to execute.