Introduction

Source: Elixir guide, Introduction.

This guide covers Elixir fundamentals: syntax, modules, the common data structures. This chapter gets Elixir installed and IEx running.

Installation

Install from the installation page and check with elixir --version. The guide, in the version mirrored here, needs Elixir 1.18.0 or later and Erlang/OTP 27 or later.

The three executables

Installing Elixir gives you iex, elixir and elixirc. All of them end up on the Erlang VM.

iex and elixir evaluate code directly. elixirc writes .beam bytecode for the VM to load.

• iex is the interactive shell. Type an expression, get its result. Exit with Ctrl+C twice. (iex.bat on Windows PowerShell.)
• elixir file.exs runs a script.
• elixirc compiles .ex files to bytecode.

iex(1)> 40 + 2
42
iex(2)> "hello" <> " world"
"hello world"

Running scripts

Put this in simple.exs:

IO.puts("Hello world from Elixir")

and run elixir simple.exs. iex and elixir are all you need for the language basics. Real projects are covered in the Mix and OTP guide.