Deforestation of Functional Programs through Type Inference

Abstract

Deforestation optimises a functional program by transforming it into another one that does not create certain intermediate data structures. Short cut deforestation is a deforestation method which is based on a single, local transformation rule. In return, short cut deforestation expects both producer and consumer of the intermediate structure in a certain form. Starting from the fact that short cut deforestation is based on a parametricity theorem of the second-order typed lambda-calculus, we show how the required form of a list producer can be derived through the use of type inference. Type inference can also indicates which function definitions need to be inlined. Because only limited inlining across module boundaries is practically feasible, we develop a scheme for splitting a function definition into a worker definition and a wrapper definition. For deforestation we only need to inline the small wrapper definition