Celebrating David Turner - compiling to combinators

[Rob Stewart]

Hi,

For those inspired by David Turner's work on compiling functional languages to combinators, in software and hardware, this month there's been:

1) MicroHaskell, Lennart Augustsson, YouTube, November 2023.

Abstract: MicroHs is an implementation of a subset Haskell that is using combinators; pretty much as described in David Turner's 1979 paper A New Implementation Technique for Applicative Languages.  The implementation has very few dependencies, and the binaries can run on almost anything that has a C compiler.  The talk will illustrate a few aspects of compiling to combinators.

https://youtu.be/Zk5SJ79nOnA?si=Uc4M7t4XGkRzloVO

2) A correct-by-construction conversion from lambda calculus to combinatory logic, Wouter Swierstra, JFP, November 2023.

Abstract: This pearl defines a translation from well-typed lambda terms to combinatory logic, where both the preservation of types and the correctness of the translation are enforced statically.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796823000084

Rob