Abstract
We address the problem of producing a trace of the evaluation of a program written in a lazy functional language. To avoid ambiguities and possible misunderstandings it is essential that the trace structure is defined with respect to a formally described model of program evaluation.
We provide such a formal semantics for lazy evaluation of a simple lazy language, based closely on the work of Launchbury. The trace corresponds to the sequence of expression reductions defined by the evaluation model.
We also present a scheme to generate a concrete trace of the evaluation of programs written in the target language, based on its semantic rules. We employ a two-step transformational approach: first transform the program so that, on execution, it generates a call-by-name trace as result, then further transform this trace to a call-by-need trace.
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Watson, R., Salzman, E. (1997). Tracing the evaluation of lazy functional languages: A model and its implementation. In: Shyamasundar, R.K., Ueda, K. (eds) Advances in Computing Science — ASIAN'97. ASIAN 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1345. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63875-X_63
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63875-X_63
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