Introduction to Dart
last modified January 28, 2024
This is introduction to the Dart programming language. Dart first appeared in 2011; it is developed by Google. The website of the language is https://dart.dev/.
An online development environment is available at https://dartpad.dev/.
Dart
Dart is a client-optimized language for fast applications on any platform. It is used to build mobile, desktop, server, and web applications. It is a programming language that is easy to learn and has a familiar syntax. It is optimized for building user interfaces.
Dart is an object-oriented, garbage-collected language with C-style syntax. It can compile to either native code or JavaScript.
Dart is the language of the Flutter toolkit.
Dart installation
Dart is very easy to install.
$ sudo apt-get install dart
On Debian-based Linux distributions, we can install Dart with the above command.
$ dart --version Dart SDK version: 2.10.4 (stable) (Unknown timestamp) on "linux_x64"
After successfull installation, we can check the installed version of Dart with
the --version command.
Dart has a good extension for VS Code called Dart; it contains language support and debugger for Visual Studio Code.
Dart simple example
The following is a simple example in Dart.
void main() {
print('First program in Dart');
}
The program prints a message to the console. Dart programs have the
main.dart extension. The main function is the entry point
to the program. The function name is preceded with the void keyword
indicating that the function does not return anything.
The body of the function is enclosed in a pair of curly brackets.
The print function displays a message in console. The statements
are terminated with a semicolon.
$ dart main.dart First program in Dart
We run the program.
Dart variables
Variables store references to values.
void main() {
String name = 'John Doe';
int age = 34;
print('$name is $age years old');
}
In the example, we have a string and a integer variable. The names of the
variables are preceded with String and int data types.
String name = 'John Doe';
We can create string literals both with single and double quotes.
print('$name is $age years old');
Dart supports variable interpolation in strings. The variables preceded with
the $ character are evaluated to their values inside strings.
$ dart main.dart John Doe is 34 years old
Dart user input
The dart:io library provides file, socket, HTTP, and other I/O
support for non-web applications.
import 'dart:io';
void main() {
stdout.write("Enter your name: ");
var name = stdin.readLineSync();
print('Hello $name\n');
}
The example prompts the user for his name and prints a message.
stdout.write("Enter your name: ");
We can use the stdout.write function to write to the console
without a newline character.
var name = stdin.readLineSync();
We read the user input with stdin.readLineSync.
$ dart main.dart Enter your name: Peter Hello Peter
Source
This was an introduction to the Dart programming language.
Author
List all Dart tutorials.
