Staging with Class: A Specification for Typed Template Haskell

Ningning Xie, Matthew T Pickering, Andres Loh, Nicolas Wu, Jeremy Yallop, Meng Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
59 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Multi-stage programming using typed code quotation is an established technique for writing optimizing code generators with strong type-safety guarantees. Unfortunately, quotation in Haskell interacts poorly with type classes, making it difficult to write robust multi-stage programs.

We study this unsound interaction and propose a resolution, staged type class constraints, which we formalize in a source calculus λ⇒ that elaborates into an explicit core calculus F. We show type soundness of both calculi, establishing that well-typed, well-staged source programs always elaborate to well-typed, well-staged core programs, and prove beta and eta rules for code quotations.

Our design allows programmers to incorporate type classes into multi-stage programs with confidence. Although motivated by Haskell, it is also suitable as a foundation for other languages that support both overloading and quotation.
Original languageEnglish
Article number61
Number of pages30
JournalProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Volume6
Issue numberPOPL
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Dimitrios Vytiniotis, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. The work is partly supported by EPSRC Grant SCOPE: Scoped Contextual Programming with Effects (EP/S028129/1) and Grant EXHIBIT: Expressive High-Level Languages for Bidirectional Transformations (EP/T008911/1).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Owner/Author.

Research Groups and Themes

  • Programming Languages

Keywords

  • Staging
  • Type Classes
  • Typed Template Haskell

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