Naming considerations

Contents

How a Program becomes Zig, in parts. Start with the introduction, then follow each part into the rendered output and the runtime it links against.

• Introduction — what the Zig target is, and how to read the rest of this section.
• Capabilities — which high-level features are possible, built in or through a library.
• Example — a full program using every keyword, and the Zig it renders to.
• Naming considerations — how Program's dotted names are carried into Zig.
• Entry point — starting a program from main with its drivers.
• Drivers — the native drivers that provide the interface, console and network.
• Runtime — the Reactive and Context machinery the rendered code links against.
• Native modules — the hand-written Zig behind NATIVE functions.
• Keywords — how each of Program's keywords renders to Zig.
• Project setup — the files and commands to build and run the rendered program.
• Reserved words — the words Zig keeps for itself, and how a colliding name is escaped.

How it looks

Zig keeps the full path, lowercased to snake_case and joined with a dot — the same separator as Program.

ui.button.integer.increment(count, struct { pub fn run() void { … } }.run);   // was Ui.Button.Integer.Increment

The natural idiom

In Zig a struct is also a namespace: a pub const can hold nested pub const structs and pub fns, and files are structs too. So nesting a container inside a container is exactly idiomatic — nothing has to be faked. The only difference from Program is the snake_case convention on the segments.

Keeping the real dotted name

Each namespace segment becomes a nested container (pub const … = struct { … }, or an imported file of that name), and the leaf a pub fn inside it — so the path is a genuine, compiler-resolved member chain, every level real.

pub const ui = struct {
  pub const button = struct {
    pub const integer = struct {
      pub fn increment(count: ReactiveValue(i64), body: fn () void) void { … }
    };
  };
};

// the call is the Program name, snake_cased:
ui.button.integer.increment(count, struct { pub fn run() void { … } }.run);

A record TYPE is a struct, a union TYPE a union(enum); a built-in value type folds to a native type (Maths.Integer → i64).

Recommendation

Use nested struct containers. Zig keeps every level of the name real, with a real dot for the separator — the closest of all the targets to Program's own notation, alongside Swift and Rust (which uses ::), and unlike Dart and Go, which must join with an underscore. The only identifiers ever rewritten are ordinary names that collide with a reserved word.