Updated April 18, 2023
Definition of Haskell vs OCaml
Haskell is also a general-purpose programming language but it is a functional programming language, it also based on lambda calculus. It was launched in 1990. If we write a program in Haskell it will always represent in the form of mathematical functions, these functions have their benefits. On the other hand, we have OCaml which is also a general-purpose programming language that also provides us object-oriented features as well, OCaml is open source and free. It comes up with some more features such as pattern matching, exception handling, automatic garbage collection, and many more which we will see in detail in the coming section of the tutorial. Also in the tutorial, we will have closer look at the internal description for both languages in detail for better understanding.
Head to Head Comparison Between Haskell vs OCaml (Infographics)
Below are the top 11 differences between Haskell vs OCaml:
Comparison Table
|
Haskell |
OCaml |
| On the other hand, Haskell is a strictly typed programming language. IN short, we can say it is a functional programming language.
|
OCaml is a general-purpose programming language.
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| Haskell is a strictly typed language like java, c, c++ so it is very easy to check the error at compile time only. | It is generally an extension to the Caml, which further stands for Categorical Abstract Machine Language, here O on OCaml stands for an objective. |
| On the other hand, Haskell is used by Wagon, thought-out and DoxIQ | It is used by many organizations which include Facebook, Citrix, Bloomberg and etc. |
| Haskell based on the lambda calculus, also every function we written in Haskell is a mathematical function, which leads to less error. | Ocaml used with applications that majorly focused on programmer analyzer, interpreters, compiler, and the applications which involve automatic theorem provers and symbolic representation as well |
| Haskel stable release came in the year 2010 designed by Paul Hudak | It was released in the year 1996 with a few of the developers Xavier Leroy, Didier, and many others |
| Functional programming language are more and more concurrent, hence provide better performance as well. | Ocaml is implemented by the interpreter which is written in LIPS |
| On the other hand, Haskell can be used to design and handle list processing and symbolic computation applications. | Ocaml provides us many features which include exception handling, pattern matching, type inference, static typing, tail recursion, and many more |
| Some of the features which are provided by Haskell make it a better choice to use over Java, C, and another programming like :
Modularity, Laziness, functional language, maintainability, etc. |
This language also comes up with the feature of object-oriented programming language, and it is an extent of CAML. |
| On the other hand, Haskell has been developed to handle multithreading very effectively | As we already know that is a strange type of language that helps us to identify the error at compile time only, also it provides us very efficient implementation a well. |
| It is based on lambda calculus and metathetical function | Ocaml also support and provide so many data types, which has two category basic and sophisticated data types such as an array, tuple, data stream and etc, |
| We have three types of installers available for Haskell to be installed on the machine. which area as :
Haskell plattform , Stack Inställer, Minimal Inställer. |
This language is mainly used for teaching programming, and various academic projects are written using the OCaml language. |
Key Difference Between Haskell vs OCaml
Let us discuss some of the major key differences between Haskell vs OCaml:
As of now we already know that both are general-purpose programming languages. But both based on different platforms also differ in syntax, features and etc. In this section, we will learn more about what they are and how to use them. WE will also see their syntax how to define functions and variables using both languages. Let’s get started to see below;
1) First we talk about, Haskell it is purely a functional programming language. A function is written in Haskell based on the mathematical functions which provide benefits to have less error. It provides various benefits if we use this language which is described below;
- a) If we wrote any application in Haskell it will provide us high reliability and less error.
- b) By using this we can increase the productivity of the developer.
- c) Code written in Haskell is easy to read, undatable, easy to maintain, and also very much clear as well.
2) ) Haskell is functional programming as we already know now so this provides the advantage of easy maintenance and also high modifiability in the application. One more advantage Haskell provides is that if you want to develop a specification or prototype in Haskell so this can be easily executed, debugged, and tested as well.
3) On the other hand if we talk about the Ocaml programming language, it Is a general-purpose programming language that provides us object-oriented features, also it provide good support for exception handling as well.
Now we will see its features in details for better understand ;
1) Ocaml provides us native code compiler, apart from its existing compiler it also provides us one additional compiler which helps us to get the machine code for various architectures.
2) Ocaml also provides us automatic memory management, by the use of a garbage collector, which is very fast and unobtrusive.
3) It provides us portable bytecode compiler which helps us to create stand-alone applications.
4) It is mainly used to develop an application which includes a compiler, interpreters, symbolic computation, program analyzers, and theorem provers, also it is widely used in a teaching programming language, and several academic projects are written in OCaml language.
5) Ocaml is a functional programming language, we can use the function we want because there is no restriction on that.
6) OCaml also provide us various inbuilt data type which further classified into two groups
- x) basic data types: this includes the common data types such as string, character, integers, Boolean and etc.
- y) sophisticated data types: this includes stakes, queues, tuple, data stream, and many more.
Conclusion
Both languages are general-purpose functional programming languages, have their own usage and implementation. According to their features and benefits, we can use them per our requirements in the application.
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