Topic
Lazy evaluation
About: Lazy evaluation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 659 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15011 citations. The topic is also known as: call-by-need & non-strict evaluation.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
Book•
1 Jan 1998TL;DR: This work describes several techniques for designing functional data structures, and numerous original data structures based on these techniques, including multiple variations of lists, queues, double-ended queues, and heaps, many supporting more exotic features such as random access or efficient catenation.
Abstract: When a C programmer needs an efficient data structure for a particular problem, he or she can often simply look one up in any of a number of good textbooks or handbooks. Unfortunately, programmers in functional languages such as Standard ML or Haskell do not have this luxury. Although some data structures designed for imperative languages such as C can be quite easily adapted to a functional setting, most cannot, usually because they depend in crucial ways on assignments, which are disallowed, or at least discouraged, in functional languages. To address this imbalance, we describe several techniques for designing functional data structures, and numerous original data structures based on these techniques, including multiple variations of lists, queues, double-ended queues, and heaps, many supporting more exotic features such as random access or efficient catenation.
In addition, we expose the fundamental role of lazy evaluation in amortized functional data structures. Traditional methods of amortization break down when old versions of a data structure, not just the most recent, are available for further processing. This property is known as persistence, and is taken for granted in functional languages. On the surface, persistence and amortization appear to be incompatible, but we show how lazy evaluation can be used to resolve this conflict, yielding amortized data structures that are efficient even when used persistently. Turning this relationship between lazy evaluation and amortization around, the notion of amortization also provides the first practical techniques for analyzing the time requirements of non-trivial lazy programs.
Finally, our data structures offer numerous hints to programming language designers, illustrating the utility of combining strict and lazy evaluation in a single language, and providing non-trivial examples using polymorphic recursion and higher-order, recursive modules.
756 citations
25 Jan 1995
TL;DR: A fully modular interpreter based on monad transformers that incudes features missing from Steele's, Espinosa's, and Wadler's earlier efforts is designed and implemented in Gofer, whose constructor classes provide just the added power over Haskell's type classes to allow precise and convenient expression of the ideas.
Abstract: We show how a set of building blocks can be used to construct programming language interpreters, and present implementations of such building blocks capable of supporting many commonly known features, including simple expressions, three different function call mechanisms (call-by-name, call-by-value and lazy evaluation), references and assignment, nondeterminism, first-class continuations, and program tracing.The underlying mechanism of our system is monad transformers, a simple form of abstraction for introducing a wide range of computational behaviors, such as state, I/O, continuations, and exceptions.Our work is significant in the following respects. First, we have succeeded in designing a fully modular interpreter based on monad transformers that incudes features missing from Steele's, Espinosa's, and Wadler's earlier efforts. Second, we have found new ways to lift monad operations through monad transformers, in particular difficult cases not achieved in Moggi's original work. Third, we have demonstrated that interactions between features are reflected in liftings and that semantics can be changed by reordering monad transformers. Finally, we have implemented our interpreter in Gofer, whose constructor classes provide just the added power over Haskell's type classes to allow precise and convenient expression of our ideas. This implementation includes a method for constructing extensible unions and a form of subtyping that is interesting in its own right.
567 citations
TL;DR: An approach to a problem that arises in this context: futures which were thought to be relevant when they were created become irrelevant through being ignored in the body of the expression where they were bound is discussed.
Abstract: This paper investigates some problems associated with an argument evaluation order that we call “future” order, which is different from both call-by-name and call-by-value, In call-by-future, each formal parameter of a function is bound to a separate process (called a “future”) dedicated to the evaluation of the corresponding argument. This mechanism allows the fully parallel evaluation of arguments to a function, and has been shown to augment the expressive power of a language.We discuss an approach to a problem that arises in this context: futures which were thought to be relevant when they were created become irrelevant through being ignored in the body of the expression where they were bound. The problem of irrelevant processes also appears in multiprocessing problem-solving systems which start several processors working on the same problem but with different methods, and return with the solution which finishes first. This parallel method strategy has the drawback that the processes which are investigating the losing methods must be identified, stopped, and re-assigned to more useful tasks.
382 citations
TL;DR: A junction tree based inference architecture exploiting the structure of the original Bayesian network and independence relations induced by evidence to improve the efficiency of inference is presented.
257 citations
TL;DR: The purpose of this short article is to give a brief overview of the main features of Miranda, and to discuss basic ideas of the Miranda programming environment.
Abstract: Miranda is an advanced functional programming system which runs under the UNIX operating system 1 . The aim of the Miranda system is to provide a modern functional language, embedded in a convenient programming environment, suitable both for teaching and as a general purpose programming tool. The purpose of this short article is to give a brief overview of the main features of Miranda. The topics we shall discuss, in order, are: Basic ideas The Miranda programming environment Guarded equations and block structure Pattern matching Currying and higher order functions List comprehensions Lazy evaluation and infinite lists Polymorphic strong typing User defined types Type synonyms
216 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
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| 2025 | 1 |
| 2024 | 3 |
| 2023 | 4 |
| 2022 | 5 |
| 2021 | 6 |
| 2020 | 9 |