GHC Core Language

[Andrew Tolmach]

[moving to haskell-cafe]

> From: matt hellige [mailto:matt@immute.net]
> a quick question re: ghc's Core language... is it still very similar
> to the abstract syntax given in, for example, santos' "compilation by
> transformation..." (i think it was his dissertation?) and 
> elsewhere, or
> has it changed significantly in the last couple of years? i only ask
> because i know the language used in that paper is somewhat 
> different from
> the Core language given in peyton jones and lester's 
> "implementing functional 
> languages" from 92, and includes type annotations and so on.
> 
> m
> 
The current Core language is still quite similar to what is described in
Santos'
work; see

SL Peyton Jones and A Santos,
"A transformation-based optimiser for Haskell,"
Science of Computer Programming 32(1-3), pp3-47, September 1998.
http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/papers/comp-by-trans-scp.ps.gz

But there have been some noticeable changes; for example, 
function arguments are no longer required to be atomic.
A more recent version of Core is partially described (omitting types) in 

SL Peyton Jones & S Marlowe, 
"Secrets of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler Inliner,"
IDL'99.
http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/papers/inline.ps.gz