research-article

Type-safe diff for families of datatypes

Authors:

Eelco Lempsink,

Andres LöhAuthors Info & Claims

WGP '09: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Generic programming

Pages 61 - 72

https://doi.org/10.1145/1596614.1596624

Published: 30 August 2009 Publication History

Abstract

The UNIX diff program finds the difference between two text files using a classic algorithm for determining the longest common subsequence; however, when working with structured input (e.g. program code), we often want to find the difference between tree-like data (e.g. the abstract syntax tree). In a functional programming language such as Haskell, we can represent this data with a family of (mutually recursive) datatypes. In this paper, we describe a functional, datatype-generic implementation of diff (and the associated program patch). Our approach requires advanced type system features to preserve type safety; therefore, we present the code in Agda, a dependently-typed language well-suited to datatype-generic programming. In order to establish the usefulness of our work, we show that its efficiency can be improved with memoization and that it can also be defined in Haskell.

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Cited By

Erdweg SSzabó TPacak AFreund SYahav E(2021)Concise, type-safe, and efficient structural diffingProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454052(406-419)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454052
Cosman BEndres MSakkas GMedvinsky LYang YJhala RChaudhuri KWeimer WZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)PABLOProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366860(1047-1053)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366860
Miraldo VSwierstra W(2019)An efficient algorithm for type-safe structural diffingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33417173:ICFP(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341717
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Type-safe diff for families of datatypes
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Data types and structures
      2. Language types
        Functional languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

WGP '09: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Generic programming

August 2009

100 pages

ISBN:9781605585109

DOI:10.1145/1596614

Program Chairs:
Patrik Jansson
Chalmers U. of Technology and U. of Gothenburg, Sweden
,
Sibylle Schupp
Hamburg University of Technology, Germany

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 30 August 2009

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ICFP '09

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ICFP '09: ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

August 30, 2009

Edinburgh, Scotland

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Overall Acceptance Rate 30 of 43 submissions, 70%

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Cited By

Erdweg SSzabó TPacak AFreund SYahav E(2021)Concise, type-safe, and efficient structural diffingProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454052(406-419)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454052
Cosman BEndres MSakkas GMedvinsky LYang YJhala RChaudhuri KWeimer WZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)PABLOProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366860(1047-1053)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366860
Miraldo VSwierstra W(2019)An efficient algorithm for type-safe structural diffingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33417173:ICFP(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341717
Serrano AMiraldo V(2018)Generic programming of all kindsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3299711.324274553:7(41-54)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3299711.3242745
Serrano AMiraldo VWu N(2018)Generic programming of all kindsProceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Haskell10.1145/3242744.3242745(41-54)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3242744.3242745
SEIDEL EJHALA RWEIMER W(2018)Dynamic witnesses for static type errors (or, Ill-Typed Programs Usually Go Wrong)Journal of Functional Programming10.1017/S095679681800012628Online publication date: 21-May-2018
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796818000126
Seidel ESibghat HChaudhuri KWeimer WJhala R(2017)Learning to blame: localizing novice type errors with data-driven diagnosisProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31388181:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3138818
Miraldo VDagand PSwierstra WLindley SYorgey B(2017)Type-directed diffing of structured dataProceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Type-Driven Development10.1145/3122975.3122976(2-15)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3122975.3122976
Vassena MChapman JSwierstra W(2016)Generic Diff3 for algebraic datatypesProceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Type-Driven Development10.1145/2976022.2976026(62-71)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2976022.2976026
de Vries ELöh AMagalhäes JRompf T(2014)True sums of productsProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Generic programming10.1145/2633628.2633634(83-94)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2633628.2633634
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