. We introduce MetaML, a practically-motivated, staticallytyped multi-stage programming language. MetaML is a "real" language. We have built an implementation and used it to solve multi-stage problems. MetaML allows the programmer to construct, combine, and execute code fragments in a type-safe manner. Code fragments can contain free variables, but they obey the static-scoping principle. MetaML performs typechecking for all stages once and for all before the execution of the first stage. Certain anomalies with our first MetaML implementation led us to formalize an illustrative subset of the MetaML implementation. We present both a big-step semantics and type system for this subset, and prove the type system's soundness with respect to a big-step semantics. From a software engineering point of view, this means that generators written in the MetaML subset never generate unsafe programs. A type system and semantics for full MetaML is still ongoing work. We argue that multi-...

Notions of program dependency arise in many settings: security, partial evaluation, program slicing, and call-tracking. We argue that there is a central notion of dependency common to these settings that can be captured within a single calculus, the Dependency Core Calculus (DCC), a small extension of Moggi's computational lambda calculus. To establish this thesis, we translate typed calculi for secure information flow, binding-time analysis, slicing, and call-tracking into DCC. The translations help clarify aspects of the source calculi. We also define a semantic model for DCC and use it to give simple proofs of noninterference results for each case.

We describe the design and implementation of a compiler that automatically translates ordinary programs written in a subset of ML into code that generates native code at run time. Run-time code generation can make use of values and invariants that cannot be exploited at compile time, yielding code that is often superior to statically optimal code. But the cost of optimizing and generating code at run time can be prohibitive. We demonstrate how compile-time specialization can reduce the cost of run-time code generation by an order of magnitude without greatly affecting code quality. Several benchmark programs are examined, which exhibit an average cost of only six cycles per instruction generated at run time. 1 Introduction In this paper, we describe our experience with a prototype system for run-time code generation. Our system, called Fabius, is a compiler that takes ordinary programs written in a subset of ML and automatically compiles them into native code that generates native c...

this paper we reconsider the foundations of modal logic, following MartinL of's methodology of distinguishing judgments from propositions [ML85]. We give constructive meaning explanations for necessity (2) and possibility (3). This exercise yields a simple and uniform system of natural deduction for intuitionistic modal logic which does not exhibit anomalies found in other proposals. We also give a new presentation of lax logic [FM97] and find that it is already contained in modal logic, using the decomposition of the lax modality fl A as

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introduc e a notion of guarded rec ursive (g.r.) datatype c#w struc tors, generalizing the notion ofrec# rsive datatypes in func tional programming languages suc h as ML and Haskell. We address both theoret ic#t and prac# ic## issues resulted from this generalization. On one hand, we design a type system to formalize the notion of g.r. datatypec onstruc - tors and then prove the soundness of the type system. On the other hand, we present some signific ant applic ations (e.g., implementing objec ts, implementing stagedc omputation, etc# ) of g.r. datatype c# nstruc#S rs, arguing that g.r. datatypec onstruc torsc an have far-reac hingc onsequenc es in programming. The mainc ontribution of the paper lies in the rec#I0 ition and then the formalization of a programming notion that is of both theoretic# l interest and prac tic# l use.

MetaML is a statically typed functional programming language with special support for program generation. In addition to providing the standard features of contemporary programming languages such as Standard ML, MetaML provides three staging annotations. These staging annotations allow the construction, combination, and execution of object-programs. Our thesis is that MetaML's three staging annotations provide a useful, theoretically sound basis for building program generators. This dissertation reports on our study of MetaML's staging constructs, their use, their implementation, and their formal semantics. Our results include an extended example of where MetaML allows us to produce efficient programs, an explanation of why implementing these constructs in traditional ways can be challenging, two formulations of MetaML's semantics, a type system for MetaML, and a proposal for extending ...

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The recent years have seen a number of proposals for extending statically typed languages by dynamics or generics. Most proposals --- if not all --- require significant extensions to the underlying language. In this paper we show that this need not be the case. We propose a particularly lightweight extension that supports both dynamics and generics. Furthermore, the two features are smoothly integrated: dynamic values, for instance, can be passed to generic functions. Our proposal makes do with a standard Hindley-Milner type system augmented by existential types. Building upon these ideas we have implemented a small library that is readily usable both with Hugs and with the Glasgow Haskell compiler.

this paper into several sections. As an overview, in Section 2, I try and classify meta-programs into groups. The purpose of this is to provide a common vocabulary which we can use to describe meta-programming systems in the rest of the paper