[MLton] an analysis to flatten refs into tuples
Daniel C. Wang
danwang@CS.Princeton.EDU
Mon, 17 May 2004 19:29:20 -0400
The ref flattening is really a nice optimization, but as a MLton user I'd
like some help from the compiler to warn me when refs that I expect to be
flattenable aren't.
For example as a user who knows MLTon is doing ref flattening I'd probably
end up doing the following so that I'm sure that things get flattened the
way I'd like.
signature M_PAIR :> sig
type ('a,'b) mpair
val cons : ('a * 'b) -> ('a, 'b) mpair
val car : ('a , 'b) mpair -> 'a
val cdr : ('a , 'b) mpair -> 'b
val set_car : ('a ,'b) mpair -> 'a -> unit
val set_cdr : ('a ,'b) mpair -> 'b -> unit
end =
structure MPair :> M_PAIR =
struct
type ('a,'b) mpair = ('a ref * 'b ref) (*: mutable tuple :*)
fun cons (x,y) = (ref x,ref y)
fun car (ref x,_) = x
fun cdr (_,ref y) = y
fun set_car (x,_) x' = x := x'
fun set_cdr (_,y) y' = y := y'
end
It would be nice if my mutable tuple comment was some how checked by the ref
flattening code so that if for some reason it is not smart enough to flatten
the refs, I get a warning, and as a user I think about how to structure my
code so it is more obvious.
In fact given the code above, I expect MLton to be able to flatten any value
of type ('a,'b) mpair. Of course the reason I expect this is because of
type-abstraction. I'm not so clear if MLton can exploit this
type-abstraction info in the ref-flattening analysis. If would be very nice
if it did.