Compiling Functional to Scripting Languages

A Provably Correct Compilation of Functional Languages into Scripting Languages

“…This paper is an extended and completely revised version of [12] and [14], whose aim was to introduce IL and show the challenges of the translation. In this paper, we give a different definition of the operational semantics of both languages, add exception handling to the source and target languages, and formalize and prove the correctness of the translation from the source language F# to the target language IL.…”

“…In this paper, we give a different definition of the operational semantics of both languages, add exception handling to the source and target languages, and formalize and prove the correctness of the translation from the source language F# to the target language IL. Following the suggestion of a previous referee, we also define a translation which is simpler that the one of [12] and [14].…”

“…In our previous papers, [12] and [14], we defined a small-step semantics which ensures that well-typed programs do not "get stuck". Here, following [19], we give a coinductive characterization of the divergence judgment e | σ | ρ ⇑.…”

“…We could avoid the generation of the unneeded variables by giving two translations, one that produces an expression and another that produces a sequence, as in our previous work [14]. However, the uniformity of the translation simplifies the formal proof of correctness, which is the aim of this paper.…”

“…To deal with these problems, in previous work, [12] and [14], we proposed using dynamically typed languages as "assembly languages" to which we translate the source code from F# which is statically typed. In this way, we take advantage of the F# type checker and type inference system, as well as other F# constructs and paradigms such as pattern matching, classes, discriminated unions, namespaces, etc., and we may use the safe imperative features introduced via F# mutable variables.…”