KRC (Kent Recursive Calculator) is a
lazy functional language
In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...
developed by
David Turner from November 1979 to October 1981 based on
SASL, with
pattern matching
In computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking a given sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually has to be exact: "either it will or will not be ...
,
guards and
ZF expression
A list comprehension is a syntactic construct available in some programming languages for creating a list based on existing lists. It follows the form of the mathematical ''set-builder notation'' (''set comprehension'') as distinct from the use of ...
s
(now more usually called
list comprehensions
A list comprehension is a syntactic construct available in some programming languages for creating a list based on existing lists. It follows the form of the mathematical '' set-builder notation'' (''set comprehension'') as distinct from the use ...
).
Two implementations of KRC were written: David Turner's original one in
BCPL
BCPL ("Basic Combined Programming Language") is a procedural, imperative, and structured programming language. Originally intended for writing compilers for other languages, BCPL is no longer in common use. However, its influence is still ...
running on
EMAS, and Simon J. Croft's later one in
C under
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
, and KRC was the main language used for teaching functional programming at the
University of Kent
, motto_lang =
, mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...
at Canterbury (UK) from 1982 to 1985.
The direct successor to KRC is
Miranda, which includes a polymorphic type discipline based on that of Milner's
ML.
References
External links
KRC's home pagewith a free implementation for Unix systems
Further reading
*
Functional Programming and its Applications', David A. Turner, Cambridge U Press 1982.
*
Functional languages
History of computing in the United Kingdom
University of Kent
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