# Get started · fastText
## What is fastText?

##
What is fastText?

fastText is a library for efficient learning of word representations and sentence classification.

##
Requirements

fastText builds on modern Mac OS and Linux distributions. Since it uses C++11 features, it requires a compiler with good C++11 support. These include :

- (gcc-4.6.3 or newer) or (clang-3.3 or newer)

Compilation is carried out using a Makefile, so you will need to have a working make. For the word-similarity evaluation script you will need:

- python 2.6 or newer
- numpy & scipy

##
Building fastText as a command line tool

In order to build `fastText`, use the following:

    $ git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/fastText.git
    $ cd fastText
    $ make

This will produce object files for all the classes as well as the main binary `fasttext`. If you do not plan on using the default system-wide compiler, update the two macros defined at the beginning of the Makefile (CC and INCLUDES).

##
Building `fasttext` python module

In order to build `fasttext` module for python, use the following:

    $ git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/fastText.git
    $ cd fastText
    $ sudo pip install .
    $ # or :
    $ sudo python setup.py install

Then verify the installation went well :

    $ python
    Python 2.7.15 |(default, May  1 2018, 18:37:05)
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import fasttext
    >>>

If you don't see any error message, the installation was successful.

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