Title
Implementing typeful program transformations
Abstract
The notion of program transformation is ubiquitous in programming language studies on interpreters, compilers, partial evaluators, etc. In order to implement a program transformation, we need to choose a representation in the meta language, that is, the programming language in which we construct programs, for representing object programs, that is, the programs in the object language on which the program transformation is to be performed. In practice, most representations chosen for typed object programs are typeless in the sense that the type of an object program cannot be reflected in the type of its representation, This is unsatisfactory as such typeless representations make it impossible to capture in the type system of the meta language various invariants in a program transformation that are related to the types of object programs. In this paper, we propose an approach to implementing program transformations that makes use of a first-order typeful program representation formed in Dependent ML (DML), where the type of an object program as well as the types of the free variables in the object program can be reflected in the type of the representation of the object program. We introduce some programming techniques needed to handle this typeful program representation, and then present an implementation of a CPS transform function where the relation between the type of an object program and that of its CPS transform is captured in the type system of DML. In a broader context, we claim to have taken a solid step along the line of research on constructing certifying compilers.
Year
DOI
Venue
2003
10.1145/777388.777392
ACM SIGPLAN NOTICES
Keywords
Field
DocType
languages,theory,typeful program transformation,dependent types,Dependent ML,DML,continuation-passing style,CPS
Type system,Dependent ML,Programming language,Program transformation,Computer science,Object language,Theoretical computer science,Compiler,Program analysis,Type safety,Continuation-passing style
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
38
10
0362-1340
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
8
0.67
8
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Chiyan Chen1955.37
Hongwei Xi265256.11
CY Chen3362.81
HW Xi4291.63