Abstract

In functional programming, intermediate data structures are often used to "glue" together small programs. Deforestation is a program transformation to remove these intermediate data structures automatically. We present a simple algorithm for deforestation based on two fusion rules for hylomorphism, an expressive recursion pattern. A generic notation for hylomorphisms is introduced, where natural transformations are explicitly factored out, and it is used to represent programs. Our method successfully eliminates intermediate data structures of any algebraic type from a much larger class of compositional functional programs than previous techniques. 1 Introduction In functional programming, programs are often constructed by "gluing" together small components, using intermediate data structures to convey information between them. Such data are constructed in one component and later consumed in another component, but never appear in the result of the whole program. The compositional styl...

Citations