OCaml

Website: ocaml.org

Designed by: Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy, Ascánder Suárez

OCaml ( 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, Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy, 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).

OCaml was initially developed in the context of automated theorem proving, and has an outsize presence in static analysis and formal methods software.

Beyond these areas, it has found serious 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.

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.