Getting Started with Julia

Startup options and Julia scripts

Without any options, the julia command starts up the REPL environment. A useful option to check your environment is julia –v. This shows Julia's version, for example, julia-version 0.3.2+2. (The versioninfo()function in REPL is more detailed, the VERSION constant gives you only the version number: v"0.3.2+2"). An option that lets you evaluate expressions on the command line itself is –e, for example:

  julia -e 'a = 6 * 7;
  println(a)'

The preceding commands print out 42 (on Windows, use " instead of the ' character).

Some other options useful for parallel processing will be discussed in Chapter 9, Running External Programs. Type julia –h for a list of all options.

A script.jl file with Julia source code can be started ...