Meta-programming with names and necessity

Meta-programming is a discipline of writing programs in a certain programming language that generate, manipulate or execute programs written in another language. In a typed setting, meta-programming languages usually contain a modal type constructor to distinguish the level of object programs (which are the manipulated data) from the meta programs (which perform the computations). In functional programming, modal types of object programs generally come in two flavors: open and closed, depending on whether the expressions they classify may contain any free variables or not. Closed object programs can be executed at run-time by the meta program, but the computations over them are more rigid, and typically produce less efficient residual code. Open object programs provide better inlining and partial evaluation, but once constructed, expressions of open modal type cannot be evaluated. Recent work in this area has focused on combining the two notions into a sound type system. We present a ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: ICFP
• Authors: Aleksandar Nanevski
• Keywords: ICFP 2002, Object Programs, Open Modal Type, Open Object Programs, Programming Languages