Hugs also Hugs 98, is a bytecode interpreter

Interpreter (computing)

In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...

 for the functional

Functional programming

In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state...

 programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 Haskell

Haskell (programming language)

Haskell is a standardized, general-purpose purely functional programming language, with non-strict semantics and strong static typing. It is named after logician Haskell Curry. In Haskell, "a function is a first-class citizen" of the programming language. As a functional programming language, the...

. Hugs is the successor to Gofer

Gofer (software)

Gofer is an implementation of the programming language Haskell intended for educational purposes and supporting a language based on version 1.2 of the Haskell report. It has since been replaced by Hugs....

, and was originally derived from Gofer version 2.30b. Hugs and Gofer were originally developed by Mark P. Jones, now a professor at Portland State University

Portland State University

Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...

.

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 in several minor ways. For example, Hugs does not support mutually recursive modules.

The Hugs prompt (a Haskell REPL) accepts expressions for evaluation, but not module, type or function definitions. Hugs can load Haskell modules at start-up.