Programming language supporting first-class parallel environments. Technical report
This thesis presents a new programming model called the symmetric model in which the representation of programs is identical to the representation of data: to specify a computation, one defines a data structure. This data structure possesses the semantics of a first-class naming environment-it defines a scope and can be used to affect the evaluation environment of other expressions. A new programming language is presented called Symmetric Lisp, based on the symmetric model. Program structures in Symmetric Lisp are considered non-strict: a program's components may be examined even as its other elements continue to evaluate. The first part of the thesis investigates the interaction of non-strictness with first-class naming environments. The second part of the thesis discusses the compilation and implementation of Symmetric Lisp. An extended type inference system is presented for first-class environments that can be used to infer the proper evaluation environment of identifiers found within the scope of environment-yielding expressions. A translation of Symmetric Lisp into a high-level data flow language is presented.
- Research Organization:
- Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge, MA (USA). Lab. for Computer Science
- OSTI ID:
- 5849787
- Report Number(s):
- AD-A-207833/5/XAB; MIT/LCS/TR-434
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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