What is OCaml?
Developed for more than 20 years at Inria by a group of leading researchers
It's used in environments where a single mistake can cost millions and speed matters
It has an advanced type system that helps catch your mistakes without getting in your way
Strength
A powerful type system
User-definable algebraic data types and pattern-matching
Automatic memory management
Separate compilation of standalone applications
https://try.ocamlpro.com/
let bidning
Note that there are some constraints on what identifiers can be used for variable names.
Punctuation is excluded, except for _ and ', and variables must start with a lowercase letter or an underscore.
The let syntax can also be used to define a function
Parametric polymorphism
Tuples
an ordered collection of values that can each be of a different type
Lists
hold any number of items of the same type
Some basic operations with List
Recursive list function
Removing sequential duplicates
Options
Nesting let with in
Records
field punning
Type
Variant type
Example of using variant type
Arrays
Mutable Record Fields
Create/Update Mutable Record
Text
Refs
Handful functions to work with Refs
How to implement Ref by yourself
For loop
While loop
Where Is the Main Function?
OCaml doesn't have a unique main function
Modules
In OCaml file is a module
Module Interfaces
A module defined by a file filename.ml can be constrained by a signature placed in a file called filename.mli.
Sub Modules
Including modules
Bytecode Versus Native Code
Bytecode is interpreted by a virtual machine
Native code can be run only on a specific OS and processor architecture
Configuring environment for OCaml
brew install ocaml
brew install opam
opam install ocamlbuild
opam switch <version>
opam switch list --all
opam pin add <package name> <target>
Let's build a small OCaml program
1. Create example.ml in some empty folder
2. ocamlbuild -use-ocamlfind -pkg core -r -tag thead example.byte
3. example.byte file will be generated which we can run now