Type-based cost analysis for lazy functional languages
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Date
06/2017Grant ID
EP/P020631/1
644235
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Abstract
We present a static analysis for determining the execution costs of lazily evaluated functional languages, such as Haskell. Time- and space-behaviour of lazy functional languages can be hard to predict, creating a significant barrier to their broader acceptance. This paper applies a type-based analysis employing amortisation and cost effects to statically determine upper bounds on evaluation costs. While amortisation performs well with finite recursive data, we significantly improve the precision of our analysis for co-recursive programs (i.e. dealing with potentially infinite data structures) by tracking self-references. Combining these two approaches gives a fully automatic static analysis for both recursive and co-recursive definitions. The analysis is formally proven correct against an operational semantic that features an exchangeable parametric cost-model. An arbitrary measure can be assigned to all syntactic constructs, allowing to bound, for example, evaluation steps, applications, allocations, etc. Moreover, automatic inference only relies on first-order unification and standard linear programming solving. Our publicly available implementation demonstrates the practicability of our technique on editable non-trivial examples.
Citation
Jost , S , Vasconcelos , P , Florido , M & Hammond , K 2017 , ' Type-based cost analysis for lazy functional languages ' , Journal of Automated Reasoning , vol. 59 , no. 1 , pp. 87-120 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-016-9398-9
Publication
Journal of Automated Reasoning
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0168-7433Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media Dortrecht. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-016-9398-9
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