ML Programming Language Help For Students

Introduction to ML

ML is a general-purpose functional programming language developed by Robin-Milner and others in the early 1970s. Standard ML emphasises safety in programming. Some aspects of safety are ensured by the soundness of the Standard ML type discipline. Other aspects of safety are ensured by the fact that Standard ML implementations use automatic memory management, which precludes, for example, premature de-allocation of memory. Standard ML is a declarative language; a Standard ML program consists of a sequence of declarations of types, values (including functions) and exceptions, possibly embedded in modules. A basic module is called a structure in Standard ML, module interfaces are called signatures, and parameterised modules are calledfunctors.

Example: Hello World!

The following program "hello.sml":

print "Hello world!\n";

$ mlton hello.sml

$ ./hello

  Hello world!