Abstract

Self-compiling implementations of Haskell, i.e., those written in Haskell, have been and, except one, are still space consuming monsters. Object code size for the compilers themselves are 3-8 MByte, and they need 12-20 MByte to recompile themselves. One reason for the huge demands for memory is that the main goal for these compilers is to produce fast code. However, the compiler described in this paper, called nhc for Nearly a Haskell Compiler, is the above mentioned exception. This compiler concentrates on keeping memory usage down, even at a cost in time. The code produced is not fast but nhc is usable, and the resulting programs can be run, on computers with small memory. This paper describes some of the implementation choices done, in the Haskell part of the source code, to reduce memory consumption in nhc. It is possible to use these also in other Haskell compilers with no, or very small, changes to their run-time systems. Time is neither the main focus of nhc nor of this paper,...

Citations