Tracing Lazy Functional Languages (1996)
| Venue: | In Proceedings of Computing: The Australasian Theory Symposium |
| Citations: | 4 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Gibbons96tracinglazy,
author = {Jeremy Gibbons and Keith Wansbrough},
title = {Tracing Lazy Functional Languages},
booktitle = {In Proceedings of Computing: The Australasian Theory Symposium},
year = {1996}
}
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Abstract
We argue that Ariola and Felleisen's and Maraist, Odersky and Wadler's call-byneed lambda calculus forms a suitable formal basis for tracing evaluation in lazy functional languages. Keywords Functional programming, tracing, call-by-need, lambda calculus, lazy evaluation. 1 Tracing functional languages One major advantage of pure, and especially lazy, functional languages over more conventional imperative languages is in not having to directly and completely specify the order of execution of a program. Leaving execution order unspecified allows the compiler or interpreter to perform transformations on the code, changing the order of execution and perhaps even executing parts of the program in parallel. However, when it comes to debugging a program, this feature turns into a disadvantage. In a more conventional language, one can `trace' execution by inserting write statements in interesting places in order to monitor what is happening. More sophisticated tracing systems provide step-b...
