- The correct title of this article is A# (Axiom). The substitution or omission of a # sign is because of technical restrictions.
A# (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 in conjunction with an extensive library of data structures and other mathematical abstractions. A key design guideline for A# was suitability of compilation to portable and efficient machine code. Development of A# has now switched to the Aldor programming language. There is both an A# optimising compiler and an A# intermediate code interpreter. The compiler can produce any of:
- stand-alone executable programs
- object libraries in native operating system formats
- portable bytecode libraries
- C source code, or
- Lisp source code.
Ports have been made to many different architectures (16, 32, and 64 bit):
And to several operating systems:
- Linux
- AIX
- SunOS
- HP-UX
- NeXT
- Mach
- plus a variety of other Unix systems
- OS/2
- DOS
- Microsoft Windows
- VMS
- VM/CMS
The following C compilers are supported: gcc, Xlc, Sun, Borland, Metaware and MIPS C. This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.
