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Functional Programming for Domain-Specific Languages

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Central European Functional Programming School (CEFP 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8606))

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Abstract

Domain-specific languages are a popular application area for functional programming; and conversely, functional programming is a popular implementation vehicle for domain-specific languages—at least, for embedded ones. Why is this? The appeal of embedded domain-specific languages is greatly enhanced by the presence of convenient lightweight tools for defining, implementing, and optimising new languages; such tools represent one of functional programming’s strengths. In these lectures we discuss functional programming techniques for embedded domain-specific languages; we focus especially on algebraic datatypes and higher-order functions, and their influence on deep and shallow embeddings.

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the organisers of the Central European Functional Programming Summer School on Domain-Specific Languages in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, for the invitation to speak at the school on the subject of FP and DSLs. My thanks go to the students who provided assistance during the practical sessions: Andrew Bate, Kwok Cheung, Bogdan Panait, and Christopher Rosset. Nick Wu and other members of the Algebra of Programming research group at Oxford made helpful suggestions on the material, and an anonymous reviewer made some suggestions to improve the presentation. This work was partially supported by UK EPSRC grant Reusability and Dependent Types (EP/G034516/1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Jeremy Gibbons

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  1. Jeremy Gibbons
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Correspondence to Jeremy Gibbons .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Viktória Zsók

  2. Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Zoltán Horváth

  3. Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Lehel Csató

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Gibbons, J. (2015). Functional Programming for Domain-Specific Languages. In: Zsók, V., Horváth, Z., Csató, L. (eds) Central European Functional Programming School. CEFP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8606. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15940-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15940-9_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15939-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15940-9

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