Miranda (programming language)

Miranda is a special kind of programming language made to be both easy and powerful. It was created by David Turner.

Miranda uses ideas from other languages, making it unique and useful for some kinds of computer work.

First released in 1985, Miranda worked well on Unix computers. Over the years, it helped shape the development of another famous language called Haskell. One of its strengths was being smaller and simpler than some other languages.

In 2020, Miranda became available as open source software. The code was updated to work with modern computers, and it can run on many different operating systems like Debian, Ubuntu, WSL/Ubuntu, macOS, and macOS Catalina. This made Miranda easier for more people to use.

Name

The name Miranda comes from a Latin word meaning "to be admired."

The logo shows a picture of the character Miranda from Shakespeare's play The Tempest, painted by John William Waterhouse.

Overview

Miranda is a special kind of programming language. It is called a lazy, purely functional language. In Miranda, programs are written as sets of equations that describe mathematical functions and data types.

Miranda uses indentation to understand code structure, so you don't need extra brackets or end statements. It has basic data types like characters, numbers, and booleans. Lists are very important in Miranda and can be created and changed in many ways, like adding or removing items. The language also lets programmers organize their code into modules to keep things tidy.

Sample code

This part shows some examples of code written in Miranda. It includes simple functions and examples of working with lists and special data structures called trees.

Miranda can handle tasks like finding all sublists of a list, working with numbers, and managing tree structures. The code examples show how to define functions, work with lists, and perform basic operations in a clear way.