PureScript
 | |
| Paradigm | Functional |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Phil Freeman |
| First appeared | 2013 |
| Stable release | 0.12.5
/ April 14, 2019 |
| Typing discipline | Static, Strong, Inferred |
| License | Permissive (Modified BSD License)[1] |
| Filename extensions | .purs |
| Website | www.purescript.org |
| Influenced by | |
| Elm, F#, Haskell, Koka, OCaml, Roy, Standard ML | |
PureScript is a strongly-typed, purely-functional programming language that compiles to JavaScript. It can be used to develop web applications, server side apps, and also desktop applications with use of Electron. Its syntax is mostly comparable to that of Haskell. In addition, it introduces row polymorphism and extensible records.[2] Also, contrary to Haskell, PureScript adheres to a strict evaluation strategy.
History
PureScript was initially designed by Phil Freeman in 2013. He started to work on PureScript as various attempts to compile Haskell to JavaScript while preserving its semantics (e.g. using Fay, Haste, or GHCJS) didn't work to his satisfaction.[3]
Since then it has been picked up by the community and is developed on GitHub. Additional core tools developed by the community include the dedicated build tool "Pulp"[4], the documentation directory "Pursuit"[5], and the package manager "Spago"[6]
Features
PureScript features strict evaluation, persistent data structures and type inference. The PureScript type system shares many features with those of similar functional languages like Haskell: algebraic data types and pattern matching, higher kinded types, type classes and functional dependencies, and higher-rank polymorphism. Perhaps most notably, PureScript's type system adds support for row polymorphism and extensible records.[7] However, PureScript lacks support for some of the more advanced features of Haskell like GADTs and type families.
The PureScript compiler attempts to produce readable JavaScript code, where possible. Through a simple FFI interface it also allows the reuse of existing JavaScript code.[8]
PureScript supports incremental compilation, and the compiler distribution includes support for building source code editor plugins for iterative development[9]. Editor plugins exist for many popular text editors, including Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text, Atom and Visual Studio Code.
Code Examples
Here is a minimal "Hello world" program in PureScript:
module Main where
import Effect.Console (log)
main = log "Hello World!"
Here, the type of the program is inferred and checked by the PureScript compiler. A more verbose version of the same program might include explicit type annotations:
module Main where
import Prelude
import Effect (Effect)
import Effect.Console (log)
main :: Effect Unit
main = log "Hello World!"
See also
- Elm: A domain-specific programming language for declaratively creating web browser-based graphical user interfaces
- TypeScript: A strongly-typed programming language that transpiles to JavaScript
References
- ^ "purescript/purescript". GitHub.
- ^ "PureScript". www.purescript.org. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
- ^ "Read PureScript by Example | Leanpub". leanpub.com. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
- ^ A build tool for PureScript projects, PureScript Contrib, 2019-03-08, retrieved 2019-03-14
- ^ "Pursuit". pursuit.purescript.org. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
- ^ 🍝 PureScript package manager and build tool powered by Dhall and package-sets: spacchetti/spago, spacchetti, 2019-03-14, retrieved 2019-03-14
- ^ Documentation for the PureScript language, compiler, and tools.: purescript/documentation, PureScript, 2019-03-14, retrieved 2019-03-14
- ^ Documentation for the PureScript language, compiler, and tools.: purescript/documentation, PureScript, 2019-03-14, retrieved 2019-03-14
- ^ purs ide: Editor and tooling support for the PureScript programming language, 2019-04-21, retrieved 2019-04-21
