Applicative style programming, program transformation, and list operators

1 January 1981

conference paper
Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

p. 25-32
https://doi.org/10.1145/800223.806759

Abstract

An important feature of the applicative style is the use of operators that package common patterns of computation. For example, the list operator map applies a function to every element of a list. Practical use of this style has been hampered by the fact that it can be very inefficient to execute. One remedy for this situation is to use source-to-source program transformation to convert applicative style programs to more efficient equivalents. This paper examines how list operators can be used to guide the transformation process. It describes a small set of list operators that possess a “complete” set of transformation rules, allowing transformations to be performed very efficiently. Whereas most previous transformation methods resemble proofs, this transformation method resembles algebraic manipulation.

Keywords

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