Abstract
Functional programs are widely appreciated for being “declarative” (algorithms are not over-specified) and implicitly paralle. However, when modeling state, both properties are compromised because the state variables must be “threaded” through most functions. Further, state “up-dates” may require much copying. A solution is to introduce assignments, as in ML and Scheme; however, for meaningful semantics, they resort to strict, sequential evaluation.
We present an alternative approach called M-structures, which are imperative data structures with implicit synchronization. M-structures are added to Id, a parallel non-strict functional language. We argue that some programs with M-structures improve on their functional counterparts in three ways: they are (1) more declarative; (2) more parallel; and (3) more storage efficient. Points (1) and (2) contradict conventional wisdom. We study two problems: histogramming a tree, and graph traversal, comparing functional and M-structure solutions.
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Barth, P.S., Nikhil, R.S., Arvind Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (1991). M-structures: Extending a parallel, non-strict, functional language with state. In: Hughes, J. (eds) Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture. FPCA 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 523. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3540543961_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3540543961_26
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