F# contains is similar in many ways to the OCaml language. However, there are some important differences, even for the core language, though mostly arising from essentially unavoidable changes for the design of a .NET language.  The differences small enough that the F# compiler can be compiled as OCaml code, or can compile itself as F# code.

For a detailed description of the ways in which F# is incompatible with OCaml please see the F# Manual. The table below will act as a guide to those features found in ML languages that are supported by F#.

Feature	F#	OCaml
Unicode strings and wide chars	Yes
Functions as values	Yes	Yes
Discriminated unions	Yes	Yes
Generics/ Type parameters	Yes	Yes
"Interior" bindings	Yes	Yes
Records	Yes	Yes
Pattern matching	Yes	Yes
Type aliases	Yes	Yes
Modules	Yes	Yes
Module Signatures	Yes	Yes
Nested Modules	Yes	Yes
Namespaces	Yes
Strong-named assemblies	Yes
Inheritance (authoring)	Yes	Yes
Object expressions	Yes	Yes
Structural subtyping constraints		Yes
Nominal subtyping constraints	Yes
Structured classes		Yes
Variance on type parameters		Yes
Labelled Arguments		Yes
Default parameters		Yes
"Printf" style formatting	Yes	Yes
Operator Overloading	Yes
Functors		Yes

The "platform" features (things that often differ between ML dialects) are:

Feature	F#	OCaml
Structural equality	Yes	Yes
Reference equality	Yes	Yes
Structural hashing	Yes	Yes
Polymorphic serialization/deserialization	Yes	Yes
Cross-module recursion
C Foreign Function Interface	Via C#	Yes
COM interopability	Via tlbimp.exe	Via camlidl
.NET interopability	Yes