F* (programming language)
| F* | |
|---|---|
| The official F* logo | |
| Paradigm | Multi-paradigm: functional, imperative |
| Family | ML: Caml: OCaml |
| Designed by | Nikhil Swamy, Juan Chen, Cédric Fournet, Pierre-Yves Strub, Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Jean Yang |
| Developers | Microsoft Research, Inria [1] |
| First appeared | 2011; 14 years ago (2011) |
| Stable release | |
| Typing discipline | dependent, inferred, static, strong |
| Implementation language | F* |
| OS | Cross-platform: Linux, macOS, Windows |
| License | Apache 2.0 |
| Filename extensions | .fst |
| Website | fstar-lang |
| Influenced by | |
| Dafny, F#, Lean, OCaml, Rocq, Standard ML | |
F* (pronounced F star) is a high-level, multi-paradigm, functional and object-oriented programming language inspired by the languages ML, Caml, and OCaml, and intended for program verification. It is a joint project of Microsoft Research, and the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria).[1] Its type system includes dependent types, monadic effects, and refinement types. This allows expressing precise specifications for programs, including functional correctness and security properties. The F* type-checker aims to prove that programs meet their specifications using a combination of satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solving and manual proofs. For execution, programs written in F* can be translated to OCaml, F#, C, WebAssembly (via KaRaMeL tool), or assembly language (via Vale toolchain). Prior F* versions could also be translated to JavaScript.
It was introduced in 2011.[3] [4] and is under active development on GitHub.[2]
History
[edit ]Versions
[edit ]Until version 2022年03月24日, F* was written entirely in a common subset of F* and F# and supported bootstrapping in both OCaml and F#. This was dropped starting in version 2022年04月02日.[5] [6]
Overview
[edit ]Operators
[edit ]F* supports common arithmetic operators such as +, -, *, and /. Also, F* supports relational operators like <, <=, ==, !=, >, and >=.[7]
Data types
[edit ]Common primitive data types in F* are bool, int, float, char, and unit.[7]
References
[edit ]- ^ a b "Microsoft Research Inria Joint Centre". MSR-INRIA.
- ^ a b "FStarLang/FStar". GitHub. Retrieved 18 May 2025.
- ^ Swamy, Nikhil; Chen, Juan; Fournet, Cédric; Strub, Pierre-Yves; Bhargavan, Karthikeyan; Yang, Jean (September 2011). Secure distributed programming with value-dependent types . ICFP '11: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming. Vol. 46. Tokyo, Japan: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 266–278. doi:10.1145/2034574.2034811 . Retrieved 17 April 2023.
- ^ "The F* Project". Microsoft. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
- ^ "fstar.exe is no longer buildable in F# as a .NET executable #2512". Github. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
- ^ "Consider dropping requirement that F* code has to be valid F# #1737". Github. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
- ^ a b Swamy, Nikhil; Martínez, Guido; Rastogi, Aseem (Jan 14, 2024). Proof-Oriented Programming in F* (PDF).
Sources
[edit ]- Ahman, Danel; Hriţcu, Cătălin; Maillard, Kenji; Martínez, Guido; Plotkin, Gordon; Protzenko, Jonathan; Rastogi, Aseem; Swamy, Nikhil (2017). "Dijkstra Monads for Free". 44nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages.
- Swamy, Nikhil; Hriţcu, Cătălin; Keller, Chantal; Rastogi, Aseem; Delignat-Lavaud, Antoine; Forest, Simon; Bhargavan, Karthikeyan; Fournet, Cédric; Strub, Pierre-Yves; Kohlweiss, Markulf; Zinzindohoue, Jean-Karim; Zanella-Béguelin, Santiago (2016). "Dependent Types and Multi-Monadic Effects in F*". 43nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages.
- Swamy, Nikhil; Martínez, Guido; Rastogi, Aseem (2024). Proof-Oriented Programming in F*.
External links
[edit ]
- High-level programming languages
- Functional languages
- OCaml programming language family
- .NET programming languages
- Microsoft programming languages
- Microsoft Research
- Microsoft free software
- Dependently typed languages
- Automated theorem proving
- Programming languages created in 2011
- Proof assistants
- 2011 software
- Cross-platform free software
- Software using the Apache license
- Statically typed programming languages