Complexity Analysis for a Lazy Higher-Order Language (1990)
| Venue: | In Proceedings of the 3rd European Symposium on Programming |
| Citations: | 44 - 2 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Sands90complexityanalysis,
author = {David Sands},
title = {Complexity Analysis for a Lazy Higher-Order Language},
booktitle = {In Proceedings of the 3rd European Symposium on Programming},
year = {1990},
pages = {361--376},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag}
}
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Abstract
This paper is concerned with the time-analysis of functional programs. Techniques which enable us to reason formally about a program's execution costs have had relatively little attention in the study of functional programming. We concentrate here on the construction of equations which compute the time-complexity of expressions in a lazy higher-order language. The problem with higher-order functions is that complexity is dependent on the cost of applying functional parameters. Structures called cost-closures are introduced to allow us to model both functional parameters and the cost of their application. The problem with laziness is that complexity is dependent on context. Projections are used to characterise the context in which an expression is evaluated, and cost-equations are parameterised by this context-description to give a compositional time-analysis. Using this form of context information we introduce two types of time-equation: sufficient-time equations and nece...
