A tension in language design has been between simple semantics on the one hand, and rich possibilities for side-effects, exception handling and so on on the other. The introduction of monads has made a large step towards reconciling these alternatives. First proposed by Moggi as a way of structuring semantic descriptions, they were adopted by Wadler to structure Haskell programs, and now offer a general technique for delimiting the scope of effects, thus reconciling referential transparency and imperative operations within one programming language. Monads have been used to solve long-standing problems such as adding pointers and assignment, inter-language working, and exception handling to Haskell, without compromising its purely functional semantics. The course will introduce monads, effects and related notions, and exemplify their applications in programming (Haskell) and in compilation (MLj). The course will present typed metalanguages for monads and related categorica...

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Denotational semantics [Sch86] is a powerful framework for describing programming languages; however, its descriptions lack modularity: conceptually independent language features influence each others' semantics. We address this problem by presenting a theory of modular denotational semantics. Following Mosses [Mos92], we divide a semantics into two parts, a computation ADT and a language ADT (abstract data type). The computation ADT represents the basic semantic structure of the language. The language ADT represents the actual language constructs, as described by a grammar. We define the language ADT using the computation ADT; in fact, language constructs are polymorphic over many different computation ADTs. Following Moggi [Mog89a], we build the computation ADT from composable parts, using monads and monad transformers. These techniques allow us to build many different computation ADTs, and, since our language constructs are polymorphic, many different language semantics. We autom...

We describe a monadic interface to low-level hardware features that is a suitable basis for building operating systems in Haskell. The interface includes primitives for controlling memory management hardware, user-mode process execution, and low-level device I/O. The interface enforces memory safety in nearly all circumstances. Its behavior is specified in part by formal assertions written in a programming logic called P-Logic. The interface has been implemented on bare IA32 hardware using the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) runtime system. We show how a variety of simple O/S kernels can be constructed on top of the interface, including a simple separation kernel and a demonstration system in which the kernel, window system, and all device drivers are written in Haskell.

A major problem for writing extensible software arises when recursively defined datatypes and operations on these types have to be extended simultaneously without modifying existing code. This paper introduces Extensible Algebraic Datatypes with Defaults which promote a simple programming pattern to solve this well known problem. We show that it is possible to encode extensible algebraic datatypes in an object-oriented language, using a new design pattern for extensible visitors. Extensible algebraic datatypes have been successfully applied in the implementation of an extensible Java compiler. Our technique allows for the reuse of existing components in compiler extensions without the need for any adaptations.

Modular monadic semantics is a high-level and modular form of denotational semantics. It is capable of capturing individual programming language features and their interactions. This thesis explores the theory and applications of modular monadic semantics, including: building blocks for individual programming features, equational reasoning with laws and axioms, modular proofs, program transformation, modular interpreters, and compiler construction. We will demonstrate that the modular monadic semantics framework makes programming languages easy to specify, reason about, and implement.

We report on an extension of Haskell with open type-level functions and equality constraints that unifies earlier work on GADTs, functional dependencies, and associated types. The contribution of the paper is that we identify and characterise the key technical challenge of entailment checking; and we give a novel, decidable, sound, and complete algorithm to solve it, together with some practically-important variants. Our system is implemented in GHC, and is already in active use.

this paper the author was partially supported by an SERC/EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship, EPSRC Research grant GR/L54639, and EU Working Group APPSEM

In a paper about pretty printing J. Hughes introduced two fundamental techniques for deriving programs from their specication, where a specication consists of a signature and properties that the operations of the signature are required to satisfy. Briey, the rst technique, the term implementation, represents the operations by terms and works by dening a mapping from operations to observations | this mapping can be seen as dening a simple interpreter. The second, the context-passing implementation, represents operations as functions from their calling context to observations. We apply both techniques to derive a backtracking monad transformer that adds backtracking to an arbitrary monad. In addition to the usual backtracking operations | failure and nondeterministic choice | the prolog cut and an operation for delimiting the eect of a cut are supported. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.1.1 [Programming Techniques]: Applicative (Functional) Programming; D.3.2 [Programming La...

The concept of Open GIS depends on precise definitions of data, operations and interfaces. This paper argues for the use of functional programming languages as specification and prototyping tools for Open GIS components. It shows how functional programming languages fulfill the key requirements for formal specification languages and allow for rapid prototyping in addition. So far, it has never been possible to integrate specification and prototyping in a single, easy to use environment. Most existing specification methods lack appropriate tools for checking and prototyping, while existing tools lack either sound semantics or usability or both. The paper discusses the role of specifications in GIS, requirements for specification languages, and a survey of algebraic specifications as well as of functional languages. It then describes how functional languages can be used for writing and executing algebraic specifications. A brief example of a GIS data type specification in a functional la...