Erlang (programming language)

Erlang (programming language), by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9646 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Programming_languages
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#Declarative_programming_languages
#Dynamically_typed_programming_languages
#Ericsson
#Erlang_(programming_language)
#Formerly_proprietary_software
#Functional_languages
#Pattern_matching_programming_languages
#Programming_languages_created_in_1986
Erlang (programming language)

Erlang ( ) is a general-purpose, concurrent, functional programming language, as well as a garbage-collected runtime system.

The term Erlang is used interchangeably with Erlang/OTP, or OTP, which consists of the Erlang runtime system, a number of ready-to-use components mainly written in Erlang, and a set of design principles for Erlang programs.

The Erlang runtime system is known for its designs that are well suited for systems with the following characteristics:


The Erlang programming language is known for the following properties:


The sequential subset of the Erlang language supports eager evaluation, single assignment, and dynamic typing.

It was originally a proprietary language within Ericsson, developed by Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding and Mike Williams in 1986, but was released as open source in 1998. Erlang/OTP is supported and maintained by the OTP product unit at Ericsson.

The name "Erlang", attributed to Bjarne Däcker, has been presumed by those working on the telephony switches (for whom the language was designed) to be a reference to Danish mathematician and engineer Agner Krarup Erlang as well as a syllabic abbreviation of "Ericsson Language".

Erlang was designed with the aim of improving the development of telephony applications. The initial version of Erlang was implemented in Prolog and was influenced by the programming language PLEX used in earlier Ericsson exchanges. By 1988 Erlang had proven that it was suitable for prototyping telephone exchanges, but the Prolog interpreter was far too slow. One group withi...