Lexical Structure And Comments

Vela source files are UTF-8 text files with the .vela extension. The syntax is line-oriented where simple declarations and statements can end at a newline or semicolon, while block forms such as fn, struct, enum, trait, impl, if, match, and for are self-terminating.

Source Shape

Identifiers begin with _ or an ASCII letter and continue with ASCII letters, digits, or _. Keywords such as fn, struct, match, self, true, and false are reserved and cannot be used as ordinary names.

#!/usr/bin/env vela

// File-level declarations are ordinary items.
pub const BASE_XP: i64 = 100

fn award(level: i64) -> i64 {
    return BASE_XP + level * 10
}

Comments

Line comments start with // and run to the end of the line. Block comments use /* ... */ and may be nested, which makes it practical to disable a block that already contains comments.

fn classify(value: i64) -> String {
    /* Nested comments are valid:
       /* disabled note */
    */
    if value > 0 {
        return "positive"
    }
    return "zero-or-negative"
}

Boundaries

Vela does not include preprocessor directives, macro expansion, eval, or runtime parsing of generated source strings. Attributes are parsed as metadata, but their meaning is defined by later semantic phases, host registration, or tooling.