1 Exploring Catala
Keywords: law, catala
Summary: An exploration of the Catala language to explore how to encode exceptions
Per the Catala language website:
Catala is a domain-specific language designed by researchers inComputer Science and Law, for precisely deriving algorithmsproducing automated legal decisions.
1.1 Introductory Catala Code
This Catala program is copied directly from the documentation of Catala and is the
“hello world” of Catala. It outputs the integer 
as the Answer to the Ultimate
Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything:
declaration scope HelloWorld: output answer_everything content integer scope HelloWorld: definition answer_everything equals 42
Interestingly, this section of code comes from a tex file! Catala isbuilt around literate programming and this section is actually a validCatala file.
How To Cite
Zelko, Jacob S. Exploring Catala. https://jacobzelko.com/notes/aaa-0287/. August 24, 2026.