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The essence of compiling with continuations

Authors:

Cormac Flanagan,

Matthias FelleisenAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '93: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1993 conference on Programming language design and implementation

Pages 237 - 247

https://doi.org/10.1145/155090.155113

Published: 01 June 1993 Publication History

Abstract

In order to simplify the compilation process, many compilers for higher-order languages use the continuation-passing style (CPS) transformation in a first phase to generate an intermediate representation of the source program. The salient aspect of this intermediate form is that all procedures take an argument that represents the rest of the computation (the “continuation”). Since the nai¨ve CPS transformation considerably increases the size of programs, CPS compilers perform reductions to produce a more compact intermediate representation. Although often implemented as a part of the CPS transformation, this step is conceptually a second phase. Finally, code generators for typical CPS compilers treat continuations specially in order to optimize the interpretation of continuation parameters.

A thorough analysis of the abstract machine for CPS terms show that the actions of the code generator invert the nai¨ve CPS translation step. Put differently, the combined effect of the three phases is equivalent to a source-to-source transformation that simulates the compaction phase. Thus, fully developed CPS compilers do not need to employ the CPS transformation but can achieve the same results with a simple source-level transformation.

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Saffrich HNishida YThiemann P(2024)Law and Order for Typestate with BorrowingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897638:OOPSLA2(1475-1503)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
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Index Terms

The essence of compiling with continuations
1. Mathematics of computing
  1. Continuous mathematics
    1. Calculus
      1. Lambda calculus
  2. Mathematical analysis
    1. Calculus
      1. Lambda calculus
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Source code generation

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cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '93: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1993 conference on Programming language design and implementation

August 1993

313 pages

ISBN:0897915984

DOI:10.1145/155090

Editor:
Robert Cartwright
Rice Univ., Houston, TX

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 28, Issue 6
June 1993
313 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/173262
Editor:
Richard Wexelblat
IDA/CSED, Alexandria, VA
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1993 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: 01 June 1993

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PLDI93: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Languages Design and Implementation

June 21 - 25, 1993

New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

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