research-article

A type-preserving compiler in Haskell

Authors:

Louis-Julien Guillemette and

Stefan MonnierAuthors Info & Claims

ICFP '08: Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

September 2008

Pages 75 - 86

https://doi.org/10.1145/1411204.1411218

Published: 20 September 2008 Publication History

Abstract

There has been a lot of interest of late for programming languages that incorporate features from dependent type systems and proof assistants, in order to capture important invariants of the program in the types. This allows type-based program verification and is a promising compromise between plain old types and full blown Hoare logic proofs. The introduction of GADTs in GHC (and more recently type families) made such dependent typing available in an industry-quality implementation, making it possible to consider its use in large scale programs.

We have undertaken the construction of a complete compiler for System F, whose main property is that the GHC type checker verifies mechanically that each phase of the compiler properly preserves types. Our particular focus is on "types rather than proofs": reasonably few annotations that do not overwhelm the actual code.

We believe it should be possible to write such a type-preserving compiler with an amount of extra code comparable to what is necessary for typical typed intermediate languages, but with the advantage of static checking. We will show in this paper the remaining hurdles to reach this goal.

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Cited By

Huang YYallop J(2023)Defunctionalization with Dependent TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912417:PLDI(516-538)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3591241
Vazou NGreenberg MPolikarpova N(2022)How to safely use extensionality in Liquid HaskellProceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Haskell Symposium10.1145/3546189.3549919(13-26)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546189.3549919
Rouvoet AKrebbers RVisser E(2021)Intrinsically typed compilation with nameless labelsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34343035:POPL(1-28)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3434303
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A type-preserving compiler in Haskell
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
2. Theory of computation
  1. Logic
  2. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICFP '08: Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

September 2008

422 pages

ISBN:9781595939197

DOI:10.1145/1411204

General Chair:
James Hook
Portland State University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Peter Thiemann
Universität Freiburg, Germany

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 9
ICFP '08
September 2008
399 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1411203
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 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: 20 September 2008

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ICFP08

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ICFP08: ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

September 20 - 28, 2008

BC, Victoria, Canada

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Overall Acceptance Rate 333 of 1,064 submissions, 31%

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29th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

September 2 - 7, 2024

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Cited By

Huang YYallop J(2023)Defunctionalization with Dependent TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912417:PLDI(516-538)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3591241
Vazou NGreenberg MPolikarpova N(2022)How to safely use extensionality in Liquid HaskellProceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Haskell Symposium10.1145/3546189.3549919(13-26)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546189.3549919
Rouvoet AKrebbers RVisser E(2021)Intrinsically typed compilation with nameless labelsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34343035:POPL(1-28)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3434303
Eisenberg RSchrijvers T(2020)Stitch: the sound type-indexed type checker (functional pearl)Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Haskell10.1145/3406088.3409015(39-53)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3406088.3409015
Kumar ABlelloch GHarper R(2017)Parallel functional arraysACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300986952:1(706-718)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009869
Brown MPalsberg J(2017)Typed self-evaluation via intensional type functionsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300985352:1(415-428)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009853
Brown MPalsberg JCastagna GGordon A(2017)Typed self-evaluation via intensional type functionsProceedings of the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages10.1145/3009837.3009853(415-428)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3009837.3009853
Peyton Jones SWeirich SEisenberg RVytiniotis D(2016)A Reflection on TypesA List of Successes That Can Change the World10.1007/978-3-319-30936-1_16(292-317)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30936-1_16
McDonell TChakravarty MGrover VNewton R(2015)Type-safe runtime code generation: accelerate to LLVMACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2887747.280431350:12(201-212)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2887747.2804313
McDonell TChakravarty MGrover VNewton RLippmeier B(2015)Type-safe runtime code generation: accelerate to LLVMProceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Haskell10.1145/2804302.2804313(201-212)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2804302.2804313
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