Getting started with Julia Language

Versions#

Hello, World!

println("Hello, World!")

To run Julia, first get the interpreter from the website’s download page. The current stable release is v0.5.0, and this version is recommended for most users. Certain package developers or power users may choose to use the nightly build, which is far less stable.

When you have the interpreter, write your program in a file named hello.jl. It can then be run from a system terminal as:

$ julia hello.jl
Hello, World!

Julia can also be run interactively, by running the julia program. You should see a header and prompt, as follows:

               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  A fresh approach to technical computing
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?help" for help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 0.4.2 (2015-12-06 21:47 UTC)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |  x86_64-w64-mingw32

julia> 

You can run any Julia code in this REPL, so try:

julia> println("Hello, World!")
Hello, World!

This example makes use of a string, "Hello, World!", and of the println function—one of many in the standard library. For more information or help, try the following sources:

• The REPL has an integrated help mode to access documentation.

• The official documentation is quite comprehensive.

• Stack Overflow has a small but growing collection of examples.

• Users on Gitter are happy to help with small questions.

• The primary online discussion venue for Julia is the Discourse forum at discourse.julialang.org. More involved questions should be posted here.

• A collection of tutorials and books can be found here.