Julia (programming language)

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Julia is a high-level dynamic programming language designed to address the requirements of high-performance numerical and scientific computing while also being effective for general purpose programming.[1][2][3] Julia is written in C, C++, and Scheme using the LLVM compiler framework, while most of Julia's standard library is implemented in Julia itself.[4] Development of Julia began in 2009 and an open-source version was publicized in February 2012.[5][6] Unusual aspects of Julia's design are the inclusion of an expressive type system in a fully dynamic programming language and multiple dispatch being its core programming paradigm. The most notable aspect of the Julia implementation is its performance, which often comes within a factor of two of fully optimized C code, putting it in the performance realm of compiled languages.[4] Julia Studio is an integrated development environment for Julia.[7]

Julia

Paradigm(s) multi-paradigm: procedural, multiple dispatch, functional, meta Appeared in 2012 Designed by Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Viral B. Shah, Alan Edelman (MIT Group Leader) Stable release Typing discipline 0.1.2 (March 7, 2013) dynamic with optional type annotations and type inference

Contents
1 Language Features 1.1 Metaprogramming 2 Packages 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Influenced MATLAB, Scheme, Lisp, ML, Cecil, Dylan, PyPy, Ruby by OS License Usual filename extensions Website Linux, OS X, FreeBSD, Windows MIT License .jl

Language Features
Metaprogramming

julialang.org (http://www.julialang.org)

Julia, like one of its inspirations Lisp, is a homoiconic language, making complex code generation and transformations possible. A relatively simple example of the latter is an assert macro that will raise an error if an expression is false:
m a c r oa s s e r t ( e x ) : ( $ e x?n o t h i n g:e r r o r ( " A s s e r t i o nf a i l e d :" ,$ ( s t r i n g ( e x ) ) ) ) e n d

Notice that while the argument to a function are typically variables, the arguments to macros are expressions. Given an expression, e.g.
@ a s s e r t1 = = 0

the macro generates the new expression

1 = = 0?n o t h i n g:e r r o r ( " A s s e r t i o nf a i l e d :" ," 1 = = 0 " )

where the original expression has been spliced into the condition slot of the ternary operator and has been converted to a string for the error message. Now if the original expression evaluates as true, nothing happens, where if the expression evaluates as false, an error is raised.

Packages
In the Julia packaging system each package is a Git repository that can be stored in any publicly accessible location. A master package listing that includes package dependency information is maintained in METADATA.jl,[8] enabling easy installation from the Julia prompt:
j u l i a >P k g . a d d ( " P a c k a g e N a m e " )

Packages are typically written in Julia but can include both binaries and code written in other languages, which can be automatically compiled at package install time by the package manager.

See also
Dylan Fortran Fortress Mathematica NumPy R SciPy Ruby

References
1. ^ "The Julia Language" (http://julialang.org/) (official website). 2. ^ Bryant, Avi (Oct 2012). "Matlab, R, and Julia: Languages for data analysis" (http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/10/matlab-rjulia-languages-for-data-analysis.html). O'Reilly Strata. Retrieved 7 February 2013. 3. ^ Krill, Paul. "New Julia language seeks to be the C for scientists" (http://www.infoworld.com/d/applicationdevelopment/new-julia-language-seeks-be-the-c-scientists-190818). InfoWorld. Retrieved 7 February 2013. 4. ^ a b "Julia: A Fast Dynamic Language for Technical Computing" (http://julialang.org/images/julia-dynamic-2012-tr.pdf) (PDF). 2012. 5. ^ "Why We Created Julia" (http://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-julia/) (World Wide Web log). Feb 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2013. 6. ^ Mark, Gibbs (2013 1 9). Pure and Julia are cool languages worth checking out (http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2013/010913-gearhead.html). "Gear head". Network World (column). Retrieved 7 February 2013. 7. ^ "Julia Studio" (http://forio.com/julia/) (official website). 8. ^ "METADATA.jl" (central package listing for Julia)

External links
Official website (http://julialang.org) "The Official Julia Manual" (http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/). Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julia_(programming_language)&oldid=573365105" Categories: 2012 software Data-centric programming languages Dynamically typed programming languages Free software projects Free statistical software High-level programming languages Linux numerical analysis software Object-oriented programming languages Free data analysis software Free data visualization software

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