A♯ (Axiom)

A^♯

Paradigm	Multi-paradigm: object-oriented, functional
Designed by	Richard Dimick Jenks, Barry Trager, Stephen M. Watt, James Davenport, Robert Sutor, Scott Morrison
Developer	Thomas J. Watson Research Center
First appeared	1971 (1971)
Stable release	Gold / November 2008 (2008-11)
Preview release	Silver / July 31, 2014 (2014-07-31)
Platform	Cross-platform (16-32-64-bit): RS/6000, SPARC, Alpha, IA-32, Intel 286, Motorola 680x0, System/370
OS	Cross-platform: Linux, AIX, SunOS, HP-UX, NeXT, Mach, OS/2, DOS, Windows, VMS, VM/CMS
License	BSD-like
Filename extensions	.as
Website	axiom-developer.org
Influenced by
Pascal, Haskell
Influenced
Aldor

A^♯ (pronounced: A sharp) is an object-oriented functional programming language distributed as a separable component of Version 2 of the Axiom computer algebra system. A# types and functions are first-class values and can be used freely together with an extensive library of data structures and other mathematical abstractions. A key design guideline for A# was suitability of compiling to portable and efficient machine code. It is distributed as free and open-source software under a BSD-like license.

Development of A# has now changed to the programming language Aldor.

A# has both an optimising compiler, and an intermediate code interpreter. The compiler can emit any of:

• Executable stand-alone programs
• Libraries, of native operating system format objects, or of portable bytecode
• Source code, for languages C, or Lisp

The following C compilers are supported: GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), Xlc, Oracle Developer Studio, Borland, Metaware, and MIPS C.

References

• Stephen M. Watt; Peter A. Broadbery; Samuel S. Dooley; Pietro Iglio; Scott C. Morrison; Jonathan M. Steinbach; Robert S. Sutor (1994-07-20). "A First Report on the A^♯ Compiler" (PDF). IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. p. 7. Retrieved 2013-01-06.