F# - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

F#

Shiva Srivastava

David He

Peter Bingel

• F# (pronounced "F sharp") is a functional and object orientedprogramming language for the Microsoft .NET platform
• A strength of F# is its setting within .NET
• The core language is similar to that of the Objective Caml language: both are members of the ML programming language family.
• Like the Scala programming language, it implements a functional programming language on top of a platform originally designed for object-oriented programming paradigm.
• The F# environment includes the ability to run interactive sessions, allowing users to run pieces of code at will, collecting and analyzing the results without having to compile whole programs.

• The F# programming language has many applications ranging from scripting to cross-platform application development
• Ideal platform for scientific computing, filling the gap between low-level but high-performance numerical languages like Fortran and high-level but slow languages like Mathematica
• Can be spawned from interactive sessions, giving F# the essential functionality of many expensive technical computing environments.

• F# was initially developed by Microsoft Research, but now is being developed by Microsoft developer division after it was announced on October 17, 2007 that F# will be productized as a fully integrated language in Visual Studio[1]. The latest released version, 1.9.2.9, was released on July 31, 2007.
• F# is derived from a series of different imperative and functional languages as are most modern languages (including Java and C).
• At the heart of F# lies Objective Caml, or OCaml, and the .NET language C#.
• So, let's leave it at this: F# is, in essence, another dialect, or "manifestation" as Microsoft calls it, of a functional ML-like language mixed with the power of C#.

• interactive scripting like Python
• the foundations for an interactive data visualization environment like MATLAB
• the strong type inference and safety of ML
• easy access to the entire range of powerful .NET libraries and database tools
• The only language that is scripted/ functional /imperative/ object-oriented

Defining Variables

let x = 3 + (4 * 5)

let res = (if x = 23 then "correct" else "incorrect")

• let x = "Hello World";; System.Console.WriteLine(x);;

• F# includes support for the foundational features of functional programming including tuples, lists, options, function values, local function definitions, pattern matching and sequence expressions.
• The powerful type inference mechanisms of F# allow code to be both succinct and yet fully type-checked.
• F# also includes support for advanced functional programming constructs such as active patterns and computation expressions. Computation expressions can be used to express data queries and client/server modalities in AJAX-style web programming. They enable programmers to write succinct and robust reactive agents through the use of asynchronous workflows. Computation expressions are related to ``monads'' in Haskell.
• F# embraces object-oriented programming and includes support for type-inferred, succinct descriptions of object types.
• F# allows types and values in an F# program to be accessed from other .NET languages in a predictable and friendly way.
• F# includes support for a form of meta-programming, inspired by LINQ. This allows data queries to be expressed and type-checked in F# code and then dynamically compiled and translated to target languages such as SQL using the LinqToSql framework.
• F# fully supports .NET generics and the language was designed partly with this in mind.
• Through .NET, F# supports advanced language and runtime features such as Unicode strings, dynamic linking, preemptive multithreading, and SMP support.

• Some identifiers are now keywords.
• null, inline
• Some operator names are used for quotations.
• <@ some string @>
• There are some minor parsing differences.
• !x.y.z
• !(x.y.z)
• (!x).y.z.
• Two top-level definitions with the same name are not allowed within a module or a module type.
• let x = 1
• let x = 3

• interactive scripting like Python,
• the foundations for an interactive data visualization environment like MATLAB,
• the strong type inference and safety of ML,
• a performance profile like that of C#,
• a foundational simplicity with similar roots to Scheme,

• Microsoft
• http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/
• Wikipedia
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F#