Abstract

. Higher-order functions and the ability to create new functions at runtime, either by partial application or -abstraction of existing functions, are important features of functional languages. Since these runtimecreated functions may outlive their creating functions, it is necessary to represent all functional parameters by closures in a memory area which is not affected by the termination of function calls, i.e. in a heap component. Such a closure contains the original function, which may be a closure again, and the bindings of the parameters used (by the partial application) . It many cases, however, it is possible to avoid this expensive heap allocation and use the run-time stack or even statically allocated closures. Often a closure created for a partial application is used only locally and will never be part of the result of the creating function. In these cases, the closure may be allocated on the stack. This approach is feasible in eager and lazy languages. If we can additional...

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