Result: The anatomy of a loop : A story of scope and control

Title:
The anatomy of a loop : A story of scope and control
Authors:
SHIVERS, Olin
Source:
Proceedings of the Tenth ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP'05), September 26-28, 2005 - Tallinn, EstoniaACM SIGPLAN notices. 40(9):2-14
Publisher Information:
Broadway, NY: ACM, 2005.
Publication Year:
2005
Physical Description:
print, 23 ref
Original Material:
INIST-CNRS
Subject Terms:
Computer science, Informatique, Sciences exactes et technologie, Exact sciences and technology, Sciences appliquees, Applied sciences, Informatique; automatique theorique; systemes, Computer science; control theory; systems, Informatique théorique, Theoretical computing, Théorie des langages et analyse syntaxique, Language theory and syntactical analysis, Boucle programme, Program loop, Bucle programa, Compilateur, Compiler, Compilador, Famille langage, Language family, Familia lenguaje, Fonction récursive, Recursive function, Función recursiva, LISP, LISP language, Lambda calcul, Lambda calculus, Lambda cálculo, Langage programmation, Programming language, Lenguaje programación, Méthode continuation, Continuation method, Método continuación, Programmation fonctionnelle, Functional programming, Programación funcional, Syntaxe, Syntax, Sintaxis, Sémantique, Semantics, Semántica, Technique programmation, Programmation technique, Técnica programación, Théorie programmation, Programming theory, Design, Languages, Performance, Scheme, Theory Functional programming, compilers, continuations, control structures, iteration, lambda-calculus, macros, programming languages
Document Type:
Conference Conference Paper
File Description:
text
Language:
English
Author Affiliations:
Georgia Institute of Technology, United States
ISSN:
1523-2867
Access URL:
http://pascal-francis.inist.fr/vibad/index.php?action=search&terms=17157846
Rights:
Copyright 2005 INIST-CNRS
CC BY 4.0
Sauf mention contraire ci-dessus, le contenu de cette notice bibliographique peut être utilisé dans le cadre d’une licence CC BY 4.0 Inist-CNRS / Unless otherwise stated above, the content of this bibliographic record may be used under a CC BY 4.0 licence by Inist-CNRS / A menos que se haya señalado antes, el contenido de este registro bibliográfico puede ser utilizado al amparo de una licencia CC BY 4.0 Inist-CNRS
Notes:
Computer science; theoretical automation; systems
Accession Number:
edscal.17157846
Database:
PASCAL Archive

Further Information

Writing loops with tail-recursive function calls is the equivalent of writing them with goto's. Given that loop packages for Lisp-family languages have been around for over 20 years, it is striking that none have had much success in the Scheme world. I suggest the reason is that Scheme forces us to be precise about the scoping of the various variables introduced by our loop forms, something previous attempts to design ambitious loop forms have not managed to do. I present the design of a loop package for Scheme with a well-defined and natural scoping rule, based on a notion of control dominance that generalizes the standard lexical-scope rule of the λ-calculus. The new construct is powerful, clear, modular and extensible. The loop language is defined in terms of an underlying language for expressing control-flow graphs. This language itself has interesting properties as an intermediate representation.