form-dev/form

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1239 stars · 154 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

FORM is a symbolic manipulation system written in C that reads symbolic expressions from files and performs algebraic transformations, outputting results in textual mathematical notation. Its landmark feature is that expression size is limited only by available disk space rather than RAM, making it essential for large computations in high energy physics.

Use cases

• manipulate very large symbolic algebraic expressions
• perform pattern matching and rewriting on symbolic terms
• compute Feynman diagram algebra for high energy physics
• expand polynomial expressions too big for memory
• run symbolic computations using disk instead of RAM
• automate algebraic transformations via a scripting language

When to choose

• expressions are too large to fit in RAM in other CAS tools
• you need fast term-by-term symbolic rewriting at scale
• your field is high energy physics or perturbative quantum field theory
• you want a scriptable, batch-oriented computer algebra system

When to avoid

• you need interactive GUI-based symbolic math like Mathematica
• you need numerical computation or plotting rather than symbolic manipulation
• you need a library to embed in another program rather than a standalone tool

Facets

application · maturity active

interpreter math parser mathematics windows cli cross-platform computer-algebra symbolic-manipulation high-energy-physics big-expressions scientific-computing physics command-line algorithms linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="form-dev/form")