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Nox documentation

Nox is a statically typed, ahead-of-time compiled programming language with Python's syntax. It compiles to native code through LLVM, has a small runtime written in Zig, manages memory automatically without a garbage collector and without ownership annotations, and runs tasks in parallel on all your cores.

Native without the ownership noise.

Nox

class Account:
    owner: str
    balance: int

    def __init__(self, owner: str, balance: int) -> None:
        self.owner = owner
        self.balance = balance

    def deposit(self, amount: int) -> None:
        self.balance += amount

acct: Account = Account("Ada", 100)
acct.deposit(50)
print(f"{acct.owner} has {acct.balance}")

Output

Ada has 150

Start here#

If you want to…	Read
install Nox	Installing Nox
learn the language	the Tutorial
look something up	the Language reference and the Standard library
see what is new in 2.0	What's new in Nox 2.0 and Migrating from 1.x
build libraries, frameworks or native extensions	The three APIs
use the tools	noxc, Packages, Testing
understand how it works or contribute	Internals

What makes Nox different#

Python syntax, mandatory types. Every variable, parameter and return value has a static type, checked before the program runs — with none of the ceremony of a borrow checker.
Invisible memory management. The compiler places values on the stack or frees them at their last use when it can prove it is safe, and falls back silently to reference counting when it cannot; a cycle collector handles the rest. There are no ownership keywords, no lifetimes and no GC pauses.
Fast by default. Programs compile to native code through LLVM (QBE is an alternative back end); numeric loops run at C speed.
Concurrency without colour wars. Lightweight tasks, typed channels, and a work-stealing scheduler that uses every core — the same source runs correctly on one thread or many.
Batteries included. An HTTP server and client with TLS and WebSockets, JSON/TOML/YAML/CSV, SQLite/PostgreSQL/MySQL, regular expressions, cryptography, a router, templates, testing and more.
A real native boundary. extern def for C, the Nox Native Interface for stable plugins in C/C++/Rust/Zig, a Plugin API with manifests and capability consent, Python C extensions through HPy, and WebAssembly modules.
From web service to kernel. The same language compiles a freestanding kernel with a kernel-provided allocator.

Quick links#

Language tour in one page — if you already know Python
nox.http · nox.json · nox.sqlite · nox.thread
Security model · Platforms · FAQ
The package registry: noxpkg · The web framework: Nyx

About this documentation#

Every code example in these pages is compiled, and every example followed by an output block is also run and compared, as part of the project's test process. If something here disagrees with the compiler, that is a bug — please report it at https://github.com/mburakmmm/nox-lang/issues.

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