3 ms·

what is ML?

• randallsquared 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_(programming_language)
  • lucb1e 8y ago
    > ML (Meta Language) is a general-purpose functional programming language. --- Your comment would have been more useful with a short citation, but nevertheless, thanks! I didn't expect to be able to find that on Wikipedia (I assumed it was 'multi threaded language' or so). So ML is a functional language. Apparently functional languages are not quite obscure enough, we need more words and abbreviations for things!
    • NikkiA 7y ago
      Meta languages normally imply that you can program the language syntax itself via an extensive macro system. But then, I'm not sure perl has that facility at all.
      • bmn__ 7y ago
        It does. It's small and hacky, but powerful enough to do things like http://p3rl.org/Moops http://p3rl.org/Moops
    • Expert-007 7y ago
      The term "meta-language" shouldn't be used to identify a specific language; it's a general term for a language that describes or manipulates another language(s). For instance, the rules language for XTRAN, our Expert System, is a meta-language, and we call it "meta-code", because it manipulates many different computer languages (including itself!), as well as data and text. A well-known ML example is Backus-Naur Form (BNF), which is a meta-language for specifying well-formed statements in a language. We use BNF to drive XTRAN's parsing engine, which executes the BNF at parse time.
• NikkiA 7y ago
  Far too overloaded a term these days :(