Fields of Application
Domain-specific languages are a major application of Camlp4. Since OCaml is a multi-paradigm language, with an interactive toplevel and a native code compiler, it can be used as a backend for any kind of original language. The only thing that the developer has to do is write a Camlp4 grammar which converts the domain-specific language in question into a regular OCaml program. Other target languages can also be used, such as C.
If the target language is OCaml, simple syntax add-ons or syntactic sugar can be defined, in order to provide an expressivity which is not easy to achieve using the standard features of the OCaml language. A syntax extension is defined by a compiled OCaml module, which is passed to the camlp4o executable along with the program to process.
Interestingly, Camlp4 includes a domain-specific language as it provides syntax extensions which ease the development of syntax extensions. These extensions allow a compact definition of grammars (EXTEND statements) and quotations such as <:expr< 1 + 1 >>, i.e. deconstructing and constructing abstract syntax trees in concrete syntax.
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