Red (programming language)

Red

Red's design (click to enlarge)
Paradigm	imperative, functional, symbolic
Designed by	Nenad Rakočević
Developer	Nenad Rakočević
First appeared	2011
Stable release	0.6.6 (Beta) / March 19, 2025
OS	Linux, Windows, OS X, Syllable
License	modified BSD and Boost
Filename extensions	.red, .reds
Website	www.red-lang.org
Influenced by
Rebol, Lisp, Scala, Lua

Red is a programming language made to improve upon the older Rebol programming language. It can be used for both high and low level programming. Red was created by Nenad Rakočević in 2011.

Some technical details

Red has two parts, Red/System and Red:

• Red/System is a lower language that has a similar purpose to C, but uses a different syntax.

• Red is a higher language and interpreted, used for general-purpose tasks.

The language is able to cross-compile. Red applications can run on many different operating systems. At this time, Red applications are 32-bit, but it is planned to switch to 64-bit in the future. Red uses a garbage collector "the Simple GC".

Examples

Here is a hello world program in Red.

Hello World!

Red [Title: "Simple hello world script"]
print "Hello World!"

Here is an example of using a variable:

• To bind a word to a value, use a colon.

Red []

name: "John"
print name

Here are examples of conditionals in Red.

>> if 10 > 5 [print "large"]
large

>> unless 10 > 5 [print "large"]
== none

>> unless 5 > 10 [print "large"]
large

>> either 10 > 5 [print "bigger"] [print "smaller"]
bigger

>> either 5 > 10 [print "bigger"] [print "smaller"]
smaller

References

Further reading

• Balbaert, Ivo (May 2018). Learn Red - Fundamentals of Red. Packt Publishing. ISBN 978-1789130706.

Other websites

• Red's website
• Red's newest downloads
• Red Programming Language on GitHub
• Redprogramming.com
• Helpin' Red Archived 2021-09-28 at the Wayback Machine