Hugs (interpreter)

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Hugs (Haskell User's Gofer System), also Hugs 98, is a bytecode interpreter for the functional programming language Haskell. Hugs is the successor to Gofer, and was originally derived from Gofer version 2.30b.^[1] Hugs and Gofer were originally developed by Mark P. Jones, now a professor at Portland State University.

Hugs comes with a simple graphics library. As a complete Haskell implementation that is portable and simple to install, Hugs is sometimes recommended for new Haskell users.

Hugs deviates from the Haskell 98 specification^[2] in several minor ways.^[3] For example, Hugs does not support mutually recursive modules. A list of differences exists.^[4]

The Hugs prompt is a Haskell read–eval–print loop (REPL). It accepts expressions for evaluation, but not module, type, or function definitions. Hugs can load Haskell modules at start-up.^[5]