Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture

Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive view of the best and the latest work in functional programming. It is the proceedings of a major international conference and contains 30 papers selected from 126 submitted. A number of themes emerge. One is a growing interest in types: powerful type systems or type checkers supporting overloading, coercion, dynamic types, and incremental inference; linear types to optimize storage, and polymorphic types to optimize semantic analysis. The hot topic of partial evaluation is well represented: techniques for higher-order binding-time analysis, assuring termination of partial evaluation, and improving the residual programs a partial evaluator generates. The thorny problem of manipulating state in functional languages is addressed: one paper even argues that parallel programs with side-effects can be "more declarative" than purely functional ones. Theoretical work covers a new model of types based on projections, parametricity, a connection between strictness analysis and logic, and a discussion of efficient implementations of the lambda-calculus. The connection with computer architecture and a variety of other topics are also addressed.