Proving the Correctness of Compiler Optimisations Based on a Global Analysis: A Study of Strictness Analysis

A substantial amount of work has been devoted to the proof of correctness of various program analyses but much less attention has been paid to the correctness of compiler optimisations based on these analyses. In this paper we tackle the problem in the context of strictness analysis for lazy functional languages. We show that compiler optimisations based on strictness analysis can be expressed formally in the functional framework using continuations. This formal presentation has two beneets: it allows us to give a rigorous correctness proof of the optimised compiler; and it exposes the various optimisations made possible by a strictness analysis.