Vala (programming language)

Infobox programming language
name = Vala
paradigm = structured, imperative, object-oriented
year = 2006
influenced_by = C, C++, C#, Java
developer = Jürg Billeter, Raffaele Sandrini

Vala is a programming language that tries to bring modern language features to C, without additional runtime requirements and with little overhead, by targeting the GObject object system. It was developed by Jürg Billeter and Raffaele Sandrini. The syntax borrows heavily from C#.

Comparison with C

In comparison to C and C++, Vala uses language-level reference counting to retrieve unused memory. This memory management system does not keep track of memory handled via pointers, however.

Because Vala code is converted into standard C code before being compiled, it can take advantage of C language libraries such as GTK+.

Code example

A simple "Hello World" program:

void main () { print ("Hello World ");}

A more complex version, showing some of Vala's object-oriented features:

class Sample : Object { void run () { stdout.printf ("Hello World "); }

static void main (string [] args) { var sample = new Sample (); sample.run ();

External links

* [http://live.gnome.org/Vala The Vala Programming Language] , on GNOME Live!
* [http://code.google.com/p/vala-benchmarks/ Benchmark of Vala versus C# and C]