¶Abstract

We present a series of CPS-based intermediate languages suitable for functional language compilation, arguing that they have practical benefits over direct-style languages based on A-normal form (ANF) or monads. Inlining of functions demonstrates the benefits most clearly: in ANF-based languages, inlining involves a re-normalization step that rearranges let expressions and possibly introduces a new 'join point' function, and in monadic languages, commuting conversions must be applied; in contrast, inlining in our CPS language is a simple substitution of variables for variables.

We present a contification transformation implemented by simple rewrites on the intermediate language. Exceptions are modelled using so-called 'double-barrelled' CPS. Subtyping on exception constructors then gives a very straightforward effect analysis for exceptions. We also show how a graph-based representation of CPS terms can be implemented extremely efficiently, with linear-time term simplification.

¶BiBTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/1291151.1291179,
author = {Kennedy, Andrew},
title = {Compiling with continuations, continued},
year = {2007},
isbn = {9781595938152},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1291151.1291179},
doi = {10.1145/1291151.1291179},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming},
pages = {177–190},
numpages = {14},
keywords = {continuation passing style, continuations, functional programming languages, monads, optimizing compilation},
location = {Freiburg, Germany},
series = {ICFP '07}
}