The Cristal group works on the design and formalization of programming
languages. The main aim is to increase the robustness of computer
applications and the speed with which they can be developed.
Robustness and speed of development are increased by the use of
expressive and reliable programming languages. The research carried
out by the Cristal group aims to provide such languages and to study
their properties from a formal point of view. The team develops Caml,
a powerful high-level programming language, with portable
implementations. The language allows mixing different programming
styles (imperative, functional object-oriented). The Caml-Light
system, with its simple design (no object-orientation, a simple module
system) works well without requiring a powerful machine and is
specially useful for teaching programming courses. Objective Caml adds
modular and object-oriented features, and is equipped with an
efficient compiler. It enables the development of large and efficient
applications.
Research themes
Type systems.
Static analyses.
Foundations of object-oriented programming.
Design and compilation of high-level programming languages.
International and industrial relations
The Cristal group is in contact with the users (academic as
well as industrial) of its two Caml implementations, in particular
with the members of the Caml Consortium
(http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/).
