Compilation of functional languages by program transformation

Abstract

One of the most important issues concerning functional languages is the efficiency and the correctness of their implementation.We focus on sequential implementations for conventional von Neumann computers. The compilation process is described in terms of program transformations in the functional framework. The original functional expression is transformed into a functional term that can be seen as a traditional machine code. The two main steps are the compilation of the computation rule by the introduction of continuation functions and the compilation of the environment management using combinators. The advantage of this approach is that we do not have to introduce an abstract machine, which makes correctness proofs much simpler. As far as efficiency is concerned, this approach is promising since many optimization can be described and formally justified in the functional framework.

The Correctness of an Optimized Code Generation

“…Recent work [10,8] translates an expression into code for a stack-based machine, such that the correctness is ensured by the "compilation" itself. The transformation is, however, based on the operational semantics of the source language.…”

Automatic amortised analysis of dynamic memory allocation for lazy functional programs

“…Bjerner and Holmström [7], Fradet and Métayer [16]). The resulting programs may then be analysed using (simpler) techniques for eagerly evaluated programs, such as the automatic amortised analysis we have previously developed [19,28,29].…”

On One-Pass CPS Transformations

“…Since Plotkin [38] and Steele [47], tradition has it to do the former, but the latter makes curried continuation-passing functions continuation transformers [22]. Because this order was first promoted in Fischer's work [18], 3 putting continuations first is said to be "à la Fischer" and is used, e.g., by Fradet and Le Métayer [20], by Reppy [41], and by Sabry and Felleisen [46]. Conversely, putting continuations last is said to be "à la Plotkin" and is used more frequently.…”

“…Transforming functional programs into continuation-passing style (CPS) is a classical topic, with a long publication history [2,4,8,9,11,15,17,18,20,23,24,25,26,29,30,31,32,33,35,38,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,52], 1 including chapters in programming-languages textbooks [1,21,40], and many applications. Yet no standard algorithm for CPS transformation has emerged, and this lack contributes to maintaining continuations, CPS, and CPS transformations as mystifying artefacts in the land of programming and programming languages.…”