Hope is a small functional programming language, one developed prior to Miranda and Haskell. It is notable for being the first language with call-by-pattern evaluation and algebraic data typess. Although Hope is essentially no longer used, it is an important language in the development of functional programming.
The first implementation of Hope was strict, but since that one there have been lazy versions and strict versions with lazy constructors.
A factorial program in Hope is
dec fact : num -> num; --- fact 0 <= 1; --- fact n <= n*fact(n-1);
Unlike in Haskell, changing the order of the clauses would not change the meaning of the program, because Hope's pattern matching always favors more specific patterns over less specific ones.
External link
- Hope homepage
- History of Haskell which mentions Hope being the first language with algebraic data types.
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