About this release

About this release

This is Miranda release two of October 1989 lightly revised in May 2006.
Some  minor bugs and portability issues have been addressed and parts of
the manual rewritten for clarity and to remove  out  of  date  material.
The language and main features of the system interface remain unchanged.

Miranda release two had the  following  main  additions,  compared  with
release one
        the library directive %free (for parametrised scripts)
        unbounded size integers
Both compiler and run time system are also significantly faster.

The online manual pages are primarily intended to document the system at
the  level  required by an experienced user (meaning someone who already
knows quite a lot about programming and programming  languages  and  has
some  previous experience of functional programming). There is a certain
amount of tutorial material, but if you are  a  beginner  to  functional
programming  you  may  find parts of the manual hard to follow, and will
need to seek help elsewhere.

The following paper gives a useful  summary  of  the  main  features  of
Miranda:
  D. A. Turner "An Overview of Miranda", SIGPLAN Notices, December 1986.
A copy of this paper is included in the manual pages, but this and other
information about Miranda can be found on the world wide web at
        miranda.org.uk

The following text book can be ordered from an internet bookseller
  Simon Thompson "Miranda: the Craft of Functional Programming",
  Addison-Wesley, 470 pages, 1995.
        ISBN 0-201-42279-4 (Paperback)
A webpage for the book by the author is at
        www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/sjt/Miranda_craft/
or follow the link under BOOKS at miranda.org.uk.

Another good text book is
  Chris Clack, Colin Myers & Ellen Poon "Programming with Miranda",
  Prentice Hall, 312 pages, 1995.
        ISBN 0-13-192592-X
The rights in this book have reverted to the  authors  who  have  kindly
made it available online - follow link under BOOKS at miranda.org.uk.

The following text book was the one originally recommended for use  with
Miranda.   It  is  a  tutorial  text  aimed at undergraduates learning a
functional language as their first programming language but  is  equally
suitable  for a graduate course on functional programming.  The notation
used in the book is closely based on Miranda:-
  Richard Bird & Philip Wadler
  "An Introduction to Functional Programming",
  Prentice Hall, 293 pages, March 1988.
        ISBN 13-484189-1 (Cloth)
        ISBN 13-484197-2 (Paper)
Unfortunately it is now out of print but it may be  possible  to  obtain
second hand copies or you may find it in a library.