Abstract

Lazy functional languages seem to be unsuitable for programming small computers because their implementations require so much memory for program code and graph. In this paper we argue that the program code can be made much smaller (withoutrunning much slower) by using the old idea of throw-away compilation. Our first results are promising --- programs using throw-away compilation typically run at 75% of the speed of those with ordinary compilation, but require only 25% of the code space. 1. Introduction Today computers lurk everywhere, heavily disguised as digital diaries, mobile telephones, video cameras and countless other electronic devices. However, it is most unlikely that any of these covert computers was programmed with a functional language. Traditionally, the execution speed of functional programs has been abysmal, and their memory requirements have been absurd. Yet two characteristics of the market lead us to believe that functional languages may one day be used to program c...

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