Why is writing a compiler in a functional language easier?

Posted by wvd on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by wvd
Published on 2010-05-25T15:26:22Z Indexed on 2010/05/25 16:21 UTC
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compiler

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haskell

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language

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ocaml

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functional

Hello all,

I've been thinking of this question very long, but really couldn't find the answer on Google as well a similar question on Stackoverflow. If there is a duplicate, I'm sorry for that.

A lot of people seem to say that writing compilers and other language tools in functional languages such as OCaml and Haskell is much more efficient and easier then writing them in imperative languages.

Is this true? And if so -- why is it so efficient and easy to write them in functional languages instead of in an imperative language, like C? Also -- isn't a language tool in a functional language slower then in some low-level language like C?

Thanks in advance,

William v. Doorn

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