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Name Rascal
Synopsis Rascal is a powerful but relatively simple meta-programming language.
Description What you need to know about Rascal is this:
  • Which problems can Rascal help you to solve? Check out the Motivation for Rascal and the EASY paradigm.
  • How to get started? Read InstallingAndRunning.
  • What are the basic constructs in Rascal? Learn about its basic Concepts.
  • What is the complete reference to Rascal? Read or search through the documentation for Expressions, Statements or Declarations.
  • What standard functions does Rascal provide? Read or search through Libraries.
What are the key distinguishing features of Rascal?
  • Patterns to express query and search in (models of) programs.
  • Visit to traverse and transform (models of) meta programs.
  • SyntaxDefinition to effectively produce parsers for programming languages and other formats.
  • ConcreteSyntax to analyse and transform source code using patterns in the programming language that is manipulated.
  • Rapid IDEConstruction using Eclipse IMP and other reusable aspects of meta-programming can be found in the Libraries.
  • Simple value based CodeModels to represent any kind of fact about source code using either hierarchical or graph-like modeling constructs.
Examples Read simple examples of Rascal code in Recipes:Basic. The Rascal Libraries contain many examples of Rascal code. You will also find example code on almost every page in this tutor environment.
Benefits
  • Rascal has everything you need for any kind of meta program you want to write. See Motivation.
Pitfalls
  • Rascal is a procedural/functional language with immutable data. Do not confuse this with object-oriented programming.
  • Rascal allows you to write highly imperative code, but it has declarative constructs that lead to shorter and more readable code.
  • Rascal execution is sometimes slow; we are working on more optimization.
  • Rascal has a static type system, but the type-checker is not yet finished; currently types are checked at run-time.
Is this page unclear, or have you spotted an error? Please add a comment below and help us to improve it. For all other questions and remarks, visit ask.rascal-mpl.org.