The C* Programming Language

Published on 28 April 2022 (Updated: 09 December 2023)

Welcome to the C* page! Here, you'll find a description of the language as well as a list of sample programs in that language.

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Description

This is not the C* language described in Wikipedia. According to its creator, Emil Laine in this GitHub issue, it is a new language. From the commit history, it looks like the language was created in 2017. However, according to the issue, they are no longer actively maintaining this language. At the time of this writing, the last commit was done in May 2023.

According to the C* documentation:

C* (pronounced “C star”) is a hybrid low-level / high-level programming language focused on runtime performance and developer productivity, in this order of priority. The language is simple and unopinionated, has a clean C-like syntax, and supports imperative, generic, data-oriented, functional, and object-oriented programming.

According to the C* introduction, the C* language is intended to overcome the short-comings of C and the complexity of C++. Unlike Rust, it is intended to be used in non-safety-critical applications, so it does not have the complex lifetime and ownership model that Rust does. However, it has some memory safety features like these:

For further information on this language, see the C* documentation.

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