Whenever we write a piece of code in NetLogo, the editor automatically highlights each primitive. Some primitives become green, some blue, some brown, and some purple. Below is a list of colors and what they indicate.
Green with bold text indicates definition primitives that allow us to define new things in NetLogo. Some examples to definition primitives are:
globals
turtles-own
patches-own
links-own
to
to-report
end
Blue text indicates action primitives that allow us to ask our agents to do things. Some examples to action primitives are:
create-turtles
ask
set
let
if
ifelse
forward
fd
back
bk
die
reset-ticks
tick
clear-all
facexy
diffuse
Purple text indicates reporter primitives that reports a value, but does not change anything in the world themselves. The built-in agent characteristics such as color, pcolor, xcor, size, and thickness are also reporters, so they turn purple in code. Lastly, the basic agent breed primitives such as turtles, patches, links, turtle, patch, and link are reporters, too, so they turn purple in code. Some examples to reporter primitives are:
one-of
neighbors
any?
max
turtles-here
myself
random
random-float
turtles
patches
color
pcolor
size
+
/
>
<
=
Brown text indicates a specific value, not a primitive, in NetLogo code. Numbers, any text that is wrapped around quotation marks (""), and names of the built-in NetLogo colors (e.g., green, yellow, black, red) will all turn brown in code. NetLogo also includes some handy keywords for mathematical constants such as pi and e. These constants, too, will turn brown in code. Some examples to specific values are:
pi
127.36
"this is a random text"
e
green
brown
nobody
true
false