The FLINT project at Yale aims to build a state-of-the-art systems environment for modern typesafe languages. One important component of the FLINT system is a high-performance type-directed compiler for SML'97 (extended with higher-order modules). The FLINT/ML compiler provides several new capabilities that are not available in other type-based compilers: ffl type-directed compilation is carried over across the higher-order module boundaries; ffl recursive and mutable data objects can use unboxed representations without incurring expensive runtime cost on heavily polymorphic code; ffl parameterized modules (functors) can be selectively specialized, just as normal polymorphic functions; ffl new type representations are used to reduce the cost of type manipulation thus the compilation time. This paper gives an overview of these novel aspects, and a preliminary report on the current status of the implementation. 1 Introduction The FLINT project at Yale aims to build a state-of-the-ar...

To separately compile a program module in traditional statically-typed languages, one has to manually write down an import interface which explicitly specifies all the external symbols referenced in the module. Whenever the definitions of these external symbols are changed, the module has to be recompiled. In this paper, we present an algorithm which can automatically infer the "minimum" import interface for any module in languages based on the Damas-Milner type discipline (e.g., ML). By "minimum", we mean that the interface specifies a set of assumptions (for external symbols) that are just enough to make the module type-check and compile. By compiling each module using its "minimum" import interface, we get a separate compilation method that can achieve the following optimal property: A compilation unit never needs to be recompiled unless its own implementation changes.

Stratego is a language for the specification of transformation rules and strategies for applying them. The basic actions of transformations are matching and building instantiations of first-order term patterns. The language supports concise formulation of generic and data type-specific term traversals. One of the unusual features of Stratego is the separation of scope from matching, allowing sharing of variables through traversals. The combination of first-order patterns with strategies forms an expressive formalism for pattern matching. In this paper we discuss three examples of strategic pattern matching: (1) Contextual rules allow matching and replacement of a pattern at an arbitrary depth of a subterm of the root pattern. (2) Recursive patterns can be used to characterize concisely the structure of languages that form a restriction of a larger language. (3) Overlays serve to hide the representation of a language in another (more generic) language. These techniques are illustrated by...

Lists are ubiquitous in functional programs, thus supporting lists efficiently is a major concern to compiler writers for functional languages. Lists are normally represented as linked cons cells, with each cons cell containing a car (the data) and a cdr (the link); this is inefficient in the use of space, because 50% of the storage is used for links. Loops and recursions on lists are slow on modern machines because of the long chains of control dependences (in checking for nil) and data dependences (in fetching cdr fields). We present a data structure for "unrolled lists," where each cell has several data items (car fields) and one link (cdr). This reduces the memory used for links, and it significantly shortens the length of control-dependence and data-dependence chains in operations on lists. We further present an efficient compile-time analysis that transforms programs written for "ordinary" lists into programs on unrolled lists. The use of our new representation requires no change...

In Standard ML, as in many other languages, programmers are often confronted with an unpleasant choice between pattern matching and abstraction. Because pattern matching can only be performed on concrete datatypes, programmers must often sacrifice either the convenience of pattern matching or the engineering benefits of abstraction. Views relieve this tension by allowing pattern matching on abstract datatypes. We propose a modest extension of Standard ML with views and define its semantics via a source-to-source translation back into Standard ML without views. We claim no particular technical innovation; rather, we have attempted to engineer a solution that blends as seamlessly as possible with the rest of the language, including the module system and the stateful features of the language. 1 Introduction The convenience of pattern matching is one of the most seductive aspects of languages like Standard ML [6]. Not until the newcomer tries to write large programs does she encounter the...

Many language theoreticians have taken great efforts in designing higher-level programming languages that are more elegant and more expressive than conventional languages. However, few of these new languages have been implemented very efficiently. The result is that most software engineers still prefer to use conventional languages, even though the new higherlevel languages offer a better and simpler programming model. This dissertation concentrates on improving the performance of programs written in Standard ML (SML)---a statically typed functional language---on today's RISC machines. SML poses tough challenges to efficient implementations: very frequent function calls, polymorphic types, recursive data structures, higher-order functions, and first-class continuations. This dissertation presents the design and evaluation of several new compilation techniques that meet these challenges by taking advantage of some of the higher-level language features in SML. Type-directed compilation ...

We present a new data structure, called a random-access list, that supports array lookup and update operations in O(log n) time, while simultaneously providing O(1) time list operations (cons, head, tail). A closer analysis of the array operations improves the bound to O(minfi; log ng) in the worst case and O(log i) in the expected case, where i is the index of the desired element. Empirical evidence suggests that this data structure should be quite efficient in practice. 1 Introduction Lists are the primary data structure in every functional programmer 's toolbox. They are simple, convenient, and usually quite efficient. The main drawback of lists is that accessing the ith element requires O(i) time. In such situations, functional programmers often find themselves longing for the efficient random access of arrays. Unfortunately, arrays can be quite awkward to implement in a functional setting, where previous versions of the array must be available even after an update. Since arra...

Pattern abstractions increase the expressiveness of pattern matching, enabling the programmer to describe a broader class of regular forests with patterns. Furthermore, pattern abstractions support code reuse and code factoring, features that facilitate maintenance and evolution of code. Past research on pattern abstractions has generally ignored the aspect of compile-time checks for exhaustiveness and redundancy. In this paper we propose a class of expressive patterns that admits these compile-time checks.

. Active patterns apply preprocessing functions to data type values before they are matched. This is of use for unfree data types where more than one representation exists for an abstract value: in many cases there is a specific representation for which function definitions become very simple, and active patterns just allow to assume this specific representation in function definitions. We define the semantics of active patterns and describe their implementation. 1 Introduction Pattern matching is a well-appreciated concept of (functional) programming. It contributes to concise function definitions by implicitly decomposing data type values. In many cases, a large part of a function's definition is only needed to prepare for recursive application and to finally lead to a base case for which the definition itself is rather simple. Such function definitions could be simplified considerably if these preparatory computations could be factorized and given in a separate place. Recognizing t...

We propose three extensions to patterns and pattern matching in Haskell. The first, pattern guards, allows the guards of a guarded equation to match patterns and bind variables, as well as to test boolean condition. For this we introduce a natural generalisation of guard expressions to guard qualifiers. A frequently-occurring special case is that a function should be applied to a matched value, and the result of this is to be matched against another pattern. For this we introduce a syntactic abbreviation, transformational patterns, that is particularly useful when dealing with views. These proposals can be implemented with very modest syntactic and implementation cost. They are upward compatible with Haskell; all existing programs will continue to work. We also offer a third, much more speculative proposal, which provides the transformational-pattern construct with additional power to explicitly catch pattern match failure. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed extension by several examples, in particular, we compare our proposal with views, and we also discuss the use of the new patterns in combination with equational reasoning.