LAMBDA: The Ultimate Declarative
Author(s)
Steele, Guy Lewis, Jr.
Date Issued
November 1, 1976
Series/Report no.
AIM-379
Abstract
In this paper, a sequel to "LAMBDA: The U ltimate Imperative", a new view of LAMBDA as a renaming operator is presented and contrasted with the usual functional view taken by L ISP. This view, combined with the view of function invocation as a kind of generalized GOTO, leads to several new insights into the nat ure of the LISP evaluation mechanism and the symmetry between form and function, evaluation and application, and control and environmen t. It also complements Hewitt's actors theory nicely, explaining the intent of environment manipulation as cleanly, generally, and intu itively as the actors theory explains control structures. The relationship between functional and continuation-passing styles of progra mming is also clarified. This view of LAMBDA leads directly to a number of specific techniques for use by an optimizing compiler: 1.) T emporary locations and user-declared variables may be allocated in a uniform manner. 2.) Procedurally defined data structures may compi le into code as good as would be expected for data defined by the more usual declarative means. 3.) Lambda-calculus-theoretic models of such constructs as GOT, DO loops, call-by-name, etc. may be used directly as macros, the expansion of which may then compile into code as good as that produced by compilers which are designed especially to handle GOTO, DO, etc. The necessary characteristics of such a c ompiler designed according to this philosophy are discussed. Such a compiler is to be built in the near future as a testing ground for these ideas.
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