OCaml

OCaml

Paradigms	Multi-paradigm: functional, imperative, modular,[1] object-oriented
Family	ML: Caml
Designed by	Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy, Ascánder Suárez
Developer	Inria
First appeared	1996; 28 years ago (1996)[2]
Stable release	5.2.0[3]  / 13 May 2024; 6 months ago (13 May 2024)
Typing discipline	Inferred, static, strong, structural
Implementation language	OCaml, C
Platform	IA-32, x86-64, Power, SPARC, ARM 32-64, RISC-V
OS	Cross-platform: Linux, Unix, macOS, Windows
License	LGPLv2.1
Filename extensions	.ml, .mli
Website	ocaml.org
Influenced by
C, Caml, Modula-3, Pascal, Standard ML
Influenced
ATS, Coq, Elm, F#, F*, Haxe, Opa, Rust,[4] Scala
Objective Caml at Wikibooks

OCaml (/oʊˈkæməl/ oh-KAM-əl, formerly Objective Caml) is a general-purpose, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language which extends the Caml dialect of ML with object-oriented features. OCaml was created in 1996 by Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon,^[5] Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy,^[6] Ascánder Suárez, and others.

The OCaml toolchain includes an interactive top-level interpreter, a bytecode compiler, an optimizing native code compiler, a reversible debugger, and a package manager (OPAM) together with a composable build system for OCaml (Dune). OCaml was initially developed in the context of automated theorem proving, and is used in static analysis and formal methods software. Beyond these areas, it has found use in systems programming, web development, and specific financial utilities, among other application domains.

The acronym CAML originally stood for Categorical Abstract Machine Language, but OCaml omits this abstract machine.^[7] OCaml is a free and open-source software project managed and principally maintained by the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria). In the early 2000s, elements from OCaml were adopted by many languages, notably F# and Scala.