Temperatures

You can define ^temperature declarations in your recipes using the ^ symbol.

Gram supports two formats for a ^temperature to accommodate both precise baking requirements and subjective stovetop cooking instructions: Exact Temperatures and Semantic Temperatures.

Exact temperatures

Exact temperatures must specify a numeric value and a valid unit: C or F, case-insensitive, with or without the leading degree sign (°C/°F). Whatever spelling you use, the compiler normalizes it to the canonical °C/°F form in its output.

Preheat the #oven to ^{180C}.

Bake at ^{350°F} until golden brown.

Temperature names

Just like a ~timer, you can assign a specific name to a ^temperature. This is especially useful for clarity, allowing tools (like the CLI) or custom UI renderers to quickly extract and highlight key step information at a glance (e.g. which appliance needs to be set).

Preheat the #oven to ^oven{180°C}.

Semantic temperatures

For stovetop cooking or subjective instructions where an exact degree measurement doesn’t make sense, you can use semantic ^temperature strings. This allows you to write generic free-text strings.

Cook on ^stove{high heat} for ~{2 min}.

Turn down to ^{low} and let simmer.

Parsing Rules

When the Gram compiler encounters a ^temperature, it checks if the content inside the braces starts with a number.

• If it does, it parses it as an Exact Temperature and validates the unit that follows.
• If it doesn’t, it treats the entire content as a Semantic text string.

Error handling

Only Celsius and Fahrenheit are supported — no Kelvin or other scales. The compiler validates ^temperature declarations and will output specific warnings for malformed exact temperatures:

• Missing Unit: If you write ^{200} without specifying C or F, the compiler warns MISSING_UNIT.
• Invalid Unit: If you provide a numeric value with an unrecognized unit (e.g., ^{200K}), the compiler warns INVALID_UNIT and keeps the raw value as written.