Abstract

. This paper shows how lazy functional programs can be made mobile by compiling them for the Java Virtual Machine. The Haskell compiler it describes is based on the h,Gi-machine, which is designed for implementing lazy functional languages on parallel processors. Although this is not the obvious thing to do, it leads to a particularly elegant set of translation rules. Sadly though, the speed of the resulting Java Virtual Machine code programs is disappointing due to the surprisingly high cost of memory allocation/reclamation in current implementations of the Java Virtual Machine. In future work, we intend to find out whether this high cost is a property of the Java Virtual Machine's design or its implementation. 1 Introduction Java [AG96] programs are safe because they can be verified to ensure that they will not damage the computer that they run on, and mobile because they can be compiled for a widely available abstract machine [LY96]. As a result, Java can be used for Internet progr...

Citations