Getting Started with Fennel

A programming language is made up of syntax and semantics. The semantics of Fennel vary only in small ways from Lua (all noted below). The syntax of Fennel comes from the lisp family of languages. Lisps have syntax which is very uniform and predictable, which makes it easier to write code that operates on code as well as structured editing.

If you know Lua and a lisp already, you'll feel right at home in Fennel. Even if not, Lua is one of the simplest programming languages in existence, so if you've programmed before you should be able to pick it up without too much trouble, especially if you've used another dynamic imperative language with closures. The Lua reference manual is a fine place to look for details.

OK, so how do you do things?

Use fn to make functions. If you provide an optional name, the function will be bound to that name in local scope; otherwise it is simply a value. The argument list is provided in square brackets. The final value is returned.

(If you've never used a lisp before, the main thing to note is that the function or macro being called goes inside the parens, not outside.)

(fn print-and-add [a b c]
  (print a)
  (+ b c))

Functions defined with fn are fast; they have no runtime overhead compared to Lua. However, they also have no arity checking. (That is, calling a function with the wrong number of arguments does not cause an error.) For safer code you can use lambda which ensures you will get at least as many arguments as you define, unless you signify that one may be omitted by beginning its name with a ?:

(lambda print-calculation [x ?y z] (print (- x (* (or ?y 1) z))))
(print-calculation 5) ; -> error: Missing argument z

Note that the second argument ?y is allowed to be nil, but z is not:

(print-calculation 5 nil 3) ; -> 2

Locals are introduced using let with the names and values wrapped in a single set of square brackets:

(let [x (+ 89 5.2)
      f (fn [abc] (print (* 2 abc)))]
  (f x))

Here x is bound to the result of adding 89 and 5.2, while f is bound to a function that prints twice its argument. These bindings are only valid inside the body of the let call.

You can also introduce locals with local, which is nice when they'll be used across the whole file, but in general let is preferred because it's clearer at a glance where the value is used:

(local lume (require "lume"))

Locals set this way cannot be given new values, but you can introduce new locals that shadow the outer names:

(let [x 19]
  ;; (set x 88) <- not allowed!
  (let [x 88]
    (print (+ x 2))) ; -> 90
  (print x)) ; -> 19

If you need to change the value of a local, you can use var which works like local except it allows set to work on it. There is no nested let-like equivalent of var.

(var x 19)
(set x (+ x 8))
(print x) ; -> 27

Numbers and strings

Of course, all our standard arithmetic operators like +, -, *, and / work here in prefix form. Note that numbers are double-precision floats in all Lua versions prior to 5.3, which optionally introduced integers. On 5.3 and up, integer division uses //.

You may also use underscores to separate sections of long numbers. The underscores have no effect on the output.

(let [x (+ 1 99)
      y (- x 12)
      z 100_000]
  (+ z (/ y 10)))

Strings are essentially immutable byte arrays. UTF-8 support is provided from a 3rd-party library. Strings are concatenated with ..:

(.. "hello" " world")


In Lua (and thus in Fennel), tables are the only data structure. The main syntax for tables uses curly braces with key/value pairs in them:

{"key" value
 "number" 531
 "f" (fn [x] (+ x 2))}

You can use . to get values out of tables:

(let [tbl (function-which-returns-a-table)
      key "a certain key"]
  (. tbl key))

And tset to put them in:

(let [tbl {}
      key1 "a long string"
      key2 12]
  (tset tbl key1 "the first value")
  (tset tbl key2 "the second one")
  tbl) ; -> {"a long string" "the first value" 12 "the second one"}

Immutable tables are not native to Lua, though it's possible to construct immutable tables using metatables with some performance overhead.

Sequential Tables

Some tables are used to store data that's used sequentially; the keys in this case are just numbers starting with 1 and going up. Fennel provides alternate syntax for these tables with square brackets:

["abc" "def" "xyz"] ; equivalent to {1 "abc" 2 "def" 3 "xyz"}

Lua's built-in table.insert function is meant to be used with sequential tables; all values after the inserted value are shifted up by one index: If you don't provide an index to table.insert it will append to the end of the table.

The table.remove function works similarly; it takes a table and an index (which defaults to the end of the table) and removes the value at that index, returning it.

(local ltrs ["a" "b" "c" "d"])

(table.remove ltrs)       ; Removes "d"
(table.remove ltrs 1)     ; Removes "a"
(table.insert ltrs "d")   ; Appends "d"
(table.insert ltrs 1 "a") ; Prepends "a"

(. ltrs 2)                ; -> "b"
;; ltrs is back to its original value ["a" "b" "c" "d"]

The # form returns the length of sequential tables and strings:

(let [tbl ["abc" "def" "xyz"]]
  (+ (# tbl)
     (# (. tbl 1)))) ; -> 6

Note that the length of a table with gaps in it is undefined; it can return a number corresponding to any of the table's "boundary" positions between nil and non-nil values.

Lua's standard library is very small, and thus several functions you might expect to be included are only found in 3rd-party libraries. For instance, finding the index in a table given a value is done by lume.find in the Lume library.


Looping over table elements is done with each and an iterator like pairs (used for general tables) or ipairs (for sequential tables):

(each [key value (pairs {:key1 52 :key2 99})]
  (print key value))

(each [index value (ipairs ["abc" "def" "xyz"])]
  (print index value))

Note that whether a table is sequential or not is not an inherent property of the table but depends on which iterator is used with it. You can call ipairs on any table, and it will only iterate over numeric keys starting with 1 until it hits a nil.

You can use any Lua iterator with each, but these are the most common. Here's an example that walks through matches in a string:

(var sum 0)
(each [digits (string.gmatch "244 127 163" "%d+")]
  (set sum (+ sum (tonumber digits))))

The other iteration construct is for which iterates numerically from the provided start value to the inclusive finish value:

(for [i 1 10]
  (print i))

You can specify an optional step value; this loop will only print odd numbers under ten:

(for [i 1 10 2]
  (print i))


Finally we have conditionals. The if form in Fennel can be used the same way as in other lisp languages, but it can also be used as cond for multiple conditions compiling into elseif branches:

(let [x (math.random 64)]
  (if (= 0 (% x 2))
      (= 0 (% x 10))
      "multiple of ten"
      "I dunno, something else"))

Being a lisp, Fennel has no statements, so if returns a value as an expression. Lua programmers will be glad to know there is no need to construct precarious chains of and/or just to get a value!

The other conditional is when, which is used for an arbitrary number of side-effects and has no else clause:

(when (currently-raining?)
  (wear "boots")

Back to tables just for a bit

Strings that don't have spaces in them can use the :keyword syntax instead, which is often used for table keys:

{:key value :number 531}

If a table has string keys like this, you can pull values out of it easily if the keys are known up front:

(let [tbl {:x 52 :y 91}]
  (+ tbl.x tbl.y)) ; -> 143

You can also use this syntax with set:

(let [tbl {}]
  (set 1)
  (set tbl.two 2)
  tbl) ; -> {:one 1 :two 2}

Finally, let can destructure a table into multiple locals.

There is positional destructuring:

(let [data [1 2 3]
      [fst snd thrd] data]
  (print fst snd thrd)) ; -> 1       2       3

And destructuring of tables via key:

(let [pos {:x 23 :y 42}
      {:x x-pos :y y-pos} pos]
  (print x-pos y-pos)) ; -> 23      42

This can mix and match:

(let [f (fn [] ["abc" "def" {:x "xyz"}])
      [a d {:x x}] (f)]
  (print a)
  (print d)
  (print x))

If the size of the table doesn't match the number of binding locals, missing values are filled with nil and extra values are discarded. Note that unlike many languages, nil in Lua actually represents the absence of a value, and thus tables cannot contain nil. It is an error to try to use nil as a key, and using nil as a value removes whatever entry was at that key before.

Error handling

Error handling in Lua has two forms. Functions in Lua can return any number of values, and most functions which can fail will indicate failure by using two return values: nil followed by a failure message string. You can interact with this style of function in Fennel by destructuring with parens instead of square brackets:

(let [(f msg) ( "file" "rb")]
  ;; when succeeds, f will be a file, but if it fails f will be
  ;; nil and msg will be the failure string
  (if f
      (do (use-file-contents ( f "*all"))
          (f.close f))
      (print (.. "Could not open file: " msg))))

You can write your own function which returns multiple values with values:

(fn use-file [filename]
  (if (valid-file-name? filename)
      (open-file filename)

If you detect a serious error that needs to be signaled beyond just the calling function, you can use error for that. This will terminate the whole process unless it's within a protected call, similar to the way throwing an exception works in many languages. You can make a protected call with pcall:

(let [(ok val-or-msg) (pcall potentially-disastrous-call filename)]
  (if ok
      (print "Got value" val-or-msg)
      (print "Could not get value:" val-or-msg)))

The pcall invocation there is equivalent to running (potentially-disastrous-call filename) in protected mode. It takes an arbitrary number of arguments which are passed on to the function. You can see that pcall returns a boolean (ok here) to let you know if the call succeeded or not, and a second value (val-or-msg) which is the actual value if it succeeded or an error message if it didn't.

The assert function takes a value and an error message; it calls error if the value is nil and returns it otherwise. This can be used to turn multiple-value failures into errors (kind of the inverse of pcall which turns errors into multiple-value failures):

(let [f (assert ( filename))
      contents ( f "*all")]
  (f.close f)

In this example because returns nil and an error message upon failure, a failure will trigger an error and halt execution.

Variadic Functions

Fennel supports variadic functions like most modern languages. The syntax for taking a variable number of arguments to a function is the ... symbol, which must be the last parameter to a function. This syntax is inherited from Lua rather than Lisp.

The ... form is not a list or first class value, it expands to multiple values inline. To access individual elements of the vararg, first wrap it in a table literal ([...]) and index like a normal table, or use the select function from Lua's core library. Often, the vararg can be passed directly to another function such as print without needing to bind it to a single table.

(fn print-each [...]
 (each [i v (ipairs [...])]
  (print (.. "Argument " i " is " v))))

(print-each :a :b :c)
(fn myprint [prefix ...]
 (io.write prefix)
 (io.write (.. (select "#" ...) " arguments given: "))
 (print ...))

(myprint ":D " :d :e :f)

Varargs are scoped differently than other variables as well - they are only accessible to the function in which they are created. This means that the following code wil NOT work, as the varargs in the inner function are out of scope.

(fn badcode [...]
 (fn []
  (print ...)))


Globals are set with global. Good code doesn't use too many of these, but they can be nice for debugging in some contexts. Note that unlike most forms, with global there is no distinction between creating a new global and giving an existing global a new value.

(global add (fn [x y] (+ x y)))
(add 32 12) ; -> 44

Unless you are doing ahead-of-time compilation, Fennel will track all known globals and prevent you from refering to unknown globals, which prevents a common source of bugs in Lua where typos go undetected.

If you get an error that says unknown global in strict mode it means that you're trying compile code that uses a global which the Fennel compiler doesn't know about. Most of the time, this is due to a coding mistake. However, in some cases you may get this error with a legitimate global reference. If this happens, it may be due to a bug in the compiler, or it may be an inherent limitation of Fennel's strategy. You can use _G.myglobal to refer to it in a way that works around this check.


There are a few surprises that might bite seasoned lispers. Most of these result necessarily from Fennel's insistence upon imposing zero runtime overhead over Lua.

Other stuff just works

Note that built-in functions in Lua's standard library like math.random above can be called with no fuss and no overhead.

This includes features like coroutines, which are usually implemented using special syntax in other languages. Coroutines let you express non-blocking operations without callbacks.

Tables in Lua may seem a bit limited, but metatables allow a great deal more flexibility. All the features of metatables are accessible from Fennel code just the same as they would be from Lua.

Modules and multiple files

You can use the require function to load code from Lua files.

(let [lume (require "lume")
      tbl [52 99 412 654]
      plus (fn [x y] (+ x y))]
  ( tbl (partial plus 2))) ; -> [54 101 414 656]

Modules in Lua are simply tables which contain functions and other values. The last value in a Fennel file will be used as the value of the module. This is typically a table containing functions, though it can be any value, like a function.

By default, modules are looked up by looking thru all the directories on package.path. To require a module that's in a subdirectory, take the file name, replace the slashes with dots, and remove the extension, then pass that to require. For instance, a file called lib/ui/menu.lua would be read when loading the module

Out of the box require doesn't work with Fennel files, but you can add an entry to Lua's package.searchers (package.loaders in Lua 5.1) to support it:

local fennel = require "fennel"
table.insert(package.loaders or package.searchers, fennel.searcher)

Or if you're doing it from Fennel code:

(local fennel (require :fennel))
(table.insert (or package.loaders package.searchers) fennel.searcher)
(local mylib (require :mylib))

Once you add this, require will work on Fennel files just like it does with Lua; for instance (require :mylib.parser) will look in "mylib/parser.fnl" on Fennel's search path (stored in fennel.path which is distinct from package.path used to find Lua modules). The path usually includes an entry to let you load things relative to the current directory by default.


Lua is most commonly used to embed inside other applications, and Fennel is no different. The simplest thing to do is include Fennel the output from fennel --compile as part of your overall application's build process. However, the Fennel compiler is very small, and including it into your codebase means that you can embed a Fennel repl inside your application or support reloading from disk, allowing a much more pleasant interactive development cycle.

Here is an example of embedding the Fennel compiler inside a LÖVE game written in Lua to allow live reloads:

local fennel = require("fennel")
local f ="mycode.fnl", "rb")
-- mycode.fnl ends in a line like this:
-- {:draw (fn [] ...) :update (fn [dt] ...)}
local mycode = fennel.dofile("mycode.fnl")

love.update = function(dt)
  -- other updates

love.draw = function()
  -- other drawing

love.keypressed = function(key)
  if(key == "f5") then -- support reloading
    for k,v in pairs(fennel.dofile("mycode.fnl")) do
      mycode[k] = v
    -- other key handling

You can add fennel.lua as a single file to your project, but if you also add fennelview.fnl then when you use a Fennel repl you'll get results rendered much more nicely. Running (local view (require :fennelview)) will get you a view function which turns any table into a fennel-syntax string rendering of that table for debugging.

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