features.md

title	Features
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Features:

• Linear types: linear types allow resources to be handled in a provably-safe manner. Memory can be managed safely and without runtime overhead, avoiding double free(), use-after-free errors, and double fetch errors. Other resources like file or database handles can also be handled safely.

• Capabilities: linear capabilities enable fine-grained permissioned access to low-level facilities. Third-party dependencies can be constrained in what types of resources they can access. This makes the language less vulnerable to supply chain attacks.

• Typeclasses: typeclasses, borrowed from Haskell, allow for bounded ad-hoc polymorphism.

• Safe Arithmetic: Austral has well-defined semantics for all arithmetic operations on numeric types. There are distinct operations for trap-on-overflow arithmetic and modular arithmetic, as in Ada.

• Algebraic Data Types: algebraic data types, as in ML or Haskell, with exhaustiveness checking.

Anti-features:

• No garbage collection.
• No destructors.
• No exceptions (and no surprise control flow).
• No implicit function calls.
• No implicit type conversions.
• No global state.
• No subtyping.
• No macros.
• No reflection.
• No Java-style @Annotations.
• No type inference, type information flows in one direction.
• No uninitialized variables.
• No pre/post increment/decrement (x++ in C).
• No first-class async.
• No function overloading (except through typeclasses, where it is bounded).
• No arithmetic precedence.
• No variable shadowing.