5,103 research outputs found
Implementing functional programs using mutable abstract data types
Journal ArticleWe study the following problem in this paper. Suppose we have a purely functional program that uses a set of abstract data types by invoking their operations. Is there an order of evaluation of the operations in the program that preserves the applicative order of evaluation semantics of the program even when the abstract data types behave as mutable modules. An abstract data type is mutable if one of its operations destructively updates the object rather than returning a new object as a result. This problem is important for several reasons. It can help eliminate unnecessary copying of data structure states. It supports a methodology in which one can program in a purely functional notation for purposes of verification and clarity, and then automatically transform the program into one in a n object oriented, imperative language, such as CLU, ADA, Smalltalk, etc., that supports abstract data types. It allows accruing both the benefits of using abstract data types in programming, and allows modularity and verifiability
Description and Optimization of Abstract Machines in a Dialect of Prolog
In order to achieve competitive performance, abstract machines for Prolog and
related languages end up being large and intricate, and incorporate
sophisticated optimizations, both at the design and at the implementation
levels. At the same time, efficiency considerations make it necessary to use
low-level languages in their implementation. This makes them laborious to code,
optimize, and, especially, maintain and extend. Writing the abstract machine
(and ancillary code) in a higher-level language can help tame this inherent
complexity. We show how the semantics of most basic components of an efficient
virtual machine for Prolog can be described using (a variant of) Prolog. These
descriptions are then compiled to C and assembled to build a complete bytecode
emulator. Thanks to the high level of the language used and its closeness to
Prolog, the abstract machine description can be manipulated using standard
Prolog compilation and optimization techniques with relative ease. We also show
how, by applying program transformations selectively, we obtain abstract
machine implementations whose performance can match and even exceed that of
state-of-the-art, highly-tuned, hand-crafted emulators.Comment: 56 pages, 46 figures, 5 tables, To appear in Theory and Practice of
Logic Programming (TPLP
A Purely Functional Computer Algebra System Embedded in Haskell
We demonstrate how methods in Functional Programming can be used to implement
a computer algebra system. As a proof-of-concept, we present the
computational-algebra package. It is a computer algebra system implemented as
an embedded domain-specific language in Haskell, a purely functional
programming language. Utilising methods in functional programming and prominent
features of Haskell, this library achieves safety, composability, and
correctness at the same time. To demonstrate the advantages of our approach, we
have implemented advanced Gr\"{o}bner basis algorithms, such as Faug\`{e}re's
and , in a composable way.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted to CASC 201
Implementing and reasoning about hash-consed data structures in Coq
We report on four different approaches to implementing hash-consing in Coq
programs. The use cases include execution inside Coq, or execution of the
extracted OCaml code. We explore the different trade-offs between faithful use
of pristine extracted code, and code that is fine-tuned to make use of OCaml
programming constructs not available in Coq. We discuss the possible
consequences in terms of performances and guarantees. We use the running
example of binary decision diagrams and then demonstrate the generality of our
solutions by applying them to other examples of hash-consed data structures
Memory usage verification using Hip/Sleek.
Embedded systems often come with constrained memory footprints. It is therefore essential to ensure that software running on such platforms fulfils memory usage specifications at compile-time, to prevent memory-related software failure after deployment. Previous proposals on memory usage verification are not satisfactory as they usually can only handle restricted subsets of programs, especially when shared mutable data structures are involved. In this paper, we propose a simple but novel solution. We instrument programs with explicit memory operations so that memory usage verification can be done along with the verification of other properties, using an automated verification system Hip/Sleek developed recently by Chin et al.[10,19]. The instrumentation can be done automatically and is proven sound with respect to an underlying semantics. One immediate benefit is that we do not need to develop from scratch a specific system for memory usage verification. Another benefit is that we can verify more programs, especially those involving shared mutable data structures, which previous systems failed to handle, as evidenced by our experimental results
Linear Haskell: practical linearity in a higher-order polymorphic language
Linear type systems have a long and storied history, but not a clear path
forward to integrate with existing languages such as OCaml or Haskell. In this
paper, we study a linear type system designed with two crucial properties in
mind: backwards-compatibility and code reuse across linear and non-linear users
of a library. Only then can the benefits of linear types permeate conventional
functional programming. Rather than bifurcate types into linear and non-linear
counterparts, we instead attach linearity to function arrows. Linear functions
can receive inputs from linearly-bound values, but can also operate over
unrestricted, regular values.
To demonstrate the efficacy of our linear type system - both how easy it can
be integrated in an existing language implementation and how streamlined it
makes it to write programs with linear types - we implemented our type system
in GHC, the leading Haskell compiler, and demonstrate two kinds of applications
of linear types: mutable data with pure interfaces; and enforcing protocols in
I/O-performing functions
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