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Manifest types, modules, and separate compilation

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Xavier LeroyAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '94: Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 109 - 122

https://doi.org/10.1145/174675.176926

Published: 01 February 1994 Publication History

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Abstract

This paper presents a variant of the SML module system that introduces a strict distinction between abstract types and manifest types (types whose definitions are part of the module specification), while retaining most of the expressive power of the SML module system. The resulting module system provides much better support for separate compilation.

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Cited By

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Chiang TYallop JWhite LXie N(2024)Staged Compilation with Module FunctorsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746498:ICFP(693-727)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674649
Clement BRémy DRadanne G(2024)Fulfilling OCaml Modules with TransparencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498188:OOPSLA1(194-222)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649818
Suwa TIgarashi A(2024)An ML-Style Module System for Cross-Stage Type Abstraction in Multi-stage ProgrammingFunctional and Logic Programming10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_13(237-272)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_13
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Index Terms

Manifest types, modules, and separate compilation
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Modules / packages
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program constructs
      1. Type structures

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Reviews

Reviewer: Frank Lawrence Friedman

In many languages such as Modula-2 and C++, type specifications are treated as opaque, that is, all exported types are abstract. This feature facilitates separate compilation but is claimed to greatly reduce the expressive power of the language. On the other hand, languages such as SML, which treat type specification as transparent, are claimed to enable the construction of modules that more accurately express program structure, but clearly force compile-time checking of type consistency between the definition and use of a component to be done in a bottom-up order. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a modification to SML in which type specifications are treated as opaque but signatures can be enhanced through the use of manifest type specifications. The combination of these features is shown to adequately support separate compilation while retaining the expressivity provided by SML. It is also shown to subsume a large part of the SML sharing constraint capability. Leroy's paper is far from self-contained, and the abstract does not adequately reflect the paper's main focus. A full understanding of the issues addressed and the claimed improvements made requires a familiarity with SML and its goals as well as an understanding of some basic definitions and ideas expressed in other papers referenced in the bibliography. This style is highly appropriate for the publication containing the paper, but it makes the paper less readily available to a wider audience.

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Published In

POPL '94: Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

February 1994

492 pages

ISBN:0897916360

DOI:10.1145/174675

Chairmen:
Hans-J. Boehm
Xerox PARC
,
Bernard Lang
INRIA Rocquencourt
,
Daniel Yellin
IBM Watson Research Center

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 February 1994

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POPL94

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POPL94: 21st ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages

January 16 - 19, 1994

Oregon, Portland, USA

Acceptance Rates

POPL '94 Paper Acceptance Rate 39 of 173 submissions, 23%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 824 of 4,130 submissions, 20%

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POPL '25

Sponsor:
sigplan

The 52nd Annual ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages

January 19 - 25, 2025

Denver , CO , USA

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Cited By

View all

Chiang TYallop JWhite LXie N(2024)Staged Compilation with Module FunctorsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746498:ICFP(693-727)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674649
Clement BRémy DRadanne G(2024)Fulfilling OCaml Modules with TransparencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498188:OOPSLA1(194-222)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649818
Suwa TIgarashi A(2024)An ML-Style Module System for Cross-Stage Type Abstraction in Multi-stage ProgrammingFunctional and Logic Programming10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_13(237-272)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_13
Xie NWhite LNicole OYallop J(2023)MacoCaml: Staging Composable and Compilable MacrosProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36078517:ICFP(604-648)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607851
Zwaan Avan Antwerpen HVisser E(2022)Incremental type-checking for free: using scope graphs to derive incremental type-checkersProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35633036:OOPSLA2(424-448)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563303
Sterling JHarper R(2021)Logical Relations as Types: Proof-Relevant Parametricity for Program ModulesJournal of the ACM10.1145/347483468:6(1-47)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474834
MacQueen DHarper RReppy J(2020)The history of Standard MLProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33863364:HOPL(1-100)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386336
CRARY K(2020)A focused solution to the avoidance problemJournal of Functional Programming10.1017/S095679682000022230Online publication date: 6-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796820000222
Rapoport MLhoták O(2019)A path to DOT: formalizing fully path-dependent typesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33605713:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360571
Rowe RFérée HThompson SOwens SMcKinley KFisher K(2019)Characterising renaming within OCaml’s module system: theory and implementationProceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3314221.3314600(950-965)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3314221.3314600
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Index Terms

Recommendations

Rank 2 intersection types for modules

Separate compilation for Standard ML

Modeling abstract types in modules with open existential types

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