Compilation of Functional Languages Using Ow Graph Analysis

To implement lazy functional languages eeciently it is necessary for a compiler analyse many properties of the program. Analysis techniques proposed to support such implementations have a similar structure and each analysis is of suucient complexity that it requires a signiicant body of research to exploit to the full. We present ow graphs as a formal framework to support the diierent program analysis and synthesis techniques providing the structure for such a compiler. We have formally speciied a compiler for a lazy functional language and have also implemented it. The compiler accepts a simple functional language as input and generates C. In this paper we discuss the essentials of the formal speciication and present performance gures that demonstrate the eeciency of the compiler and of the code generated for a suite of medium size benchmark programs.