1997Journal of Functional ProgrammingOpen access

Deriving a lazy abstract machine

Peter Sestoft

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Abstract

We derive a simple abstract machine for lazy evaluation of the lambda calculus, starting from Launchbury's natural semantics. Lazy evaluation here means non-strict evaluation with sharing of argument evaluation, i.e. call-by-need. The machine we derive is a lazy version of Krivine's abstract machine, which was originally designed for call-by-name evaluation. We extend it with datatype constructors and base values, so the final machine implements all dynamic aspects of a lazy functional language.

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What this paper is about

We derive a simple abstract machine for lazy evaluation of the lambda calculus, starting from Launchbury's natural semantics. Lazy evaluation here means non-strict evaluation with sharing of argument evaluation, i.e. call-by-need. The machine we derive is a lazy version of Krivine's abstract machine, which was originally designed for call-by-name evaluation. We extend it with datatype constructors and base values, so the final machine implements all dynamic aspects of a lazy functional language.

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Available abstract

We derive a simple abstract machine for lazy evaluation of the lambda calculus, starting from Launchbury's natural semantics. Lazy evaluation here means non-strict evaluation with sharing of argument evaluation, i.e. call-by-need. The machine we derive is a lazy version of Krivine's abstract machine, which was originally designed for call-by-name evaluation. We extend it with datatype constructors and base values, so the final machine implements all dynamic aspects of a lazy functional language.

Key concepts: Computer science, Lazy evaluation, Abstract machine, Programming language, Argument (complex analysis), Semantics (computer science), Simple (philosophy), Base (topology)

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