[Haskell-cafe] Re: Re: Re: Re: Do expression definition

[Ben Franksen]

wren ng thornton wrote:
> On 9/17/10 4:04 PM, Ben Franksen wrote:
>> wren ng thornton wrote:
>>> Note that when compilers do CPS conversion, everything is
>>> converted into let-binding and continuations (i.e., longjump/goto with
>>> value passing). It's just dual to the everything-is-lambda world,
>>> nothing special.
>>
>> Do you know a good online introduction to CPS conversion that explains
>> the kind of duality you mentioned?
> 
> Not off hand. These papers[1] give a pretty good explanation of CPS
> conversion and the other stages of compilation, from the perspective of
> proving compiler correctness. But they don't say much about the duality
> aspect of it. For the duality side of things, Andrzej Filinski's masters
> thesis[2] is an excellent read; though it doesn't say much about
> compilation IIRC.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

> Basically the duality comes when decomposing a whole program. When we
> separate a term from its context, which part is in control? Control is
> just a perspective, so you could be outside the function looking in, or
> inside the function looking out. One person's push is another's pull.
> This is the same sort of thing as build/foldr vs unfoldr/destroy forms
> of list fusion: once we separate the F-algebra and F-coalgebra, which
> one should get the recursion?[3]

Ok, this gives me some vague intuition.

Cheers
Ben