Abstract
Functional programs are more amenable to rigorous mathematical analysis than imperative programs, but are typically less efficient in terms of execution space and time. The update of aggregate data structures, such as arrays, are a significant source of space/time inefficiencies in functional programming. Imperative programs can execute such updates in place, whereas the semantics of functional languages require aggregate data structures to be copied and updated. In many functional programs, the execution of aggregate updates by copying is redundant and could be safely implemented by means of destructive, inplace updates. We describe a method for analyzing higher-order, eager functional programs for safe destructive updates. This method has been implemented for the PVS specification language for the purpose of animating or testing specifications to check if they accurately reflect their intended function. We also give a careful proof of correctness for the safety of the destructive update optimization.
Funded by NSF Grants CCR-0082560 and CCR-9712383, DARPA/AFRL Contract F33615-00-C-3043, and NASA Contract NAS1-20334. The author is deeply grateful to the programme committee of the 11th International Workshop on Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation, LOPSTR 01, for the opportunity to present this work. The LOPSTR 01 programme chair, Professor Alberto Pettorossi, made several excellent suggestions, and Pavol Cerny (visiting SRI from ENS Paris) corrected numerous typographical errors in earlier drafts of this paper.
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Shankar, N. (2002). Static Analysis for Safe Destructive Updates in a Functional Language. In: Pettorossi, A. (eds) Logic Based Program Synthesis and Transformation. LOPSTR 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2372. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45607-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45607-4_1
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