Generic programming

Website:website containing additional information
Course code:INFOGP
Credits:7.5 ECTS (=5.25 old credit points)
Period:periode 1 (week 36 t/m 46, dwz 2-9-2004 t/m 12-11-2004; herkansing week 52)
Timeslot:A
Participants:up till now 16 subscriptions
Schedule:Dit is een oud rooster!
formgrouptimeweekroomteacher
college   ma 09-1138-46 BBL-416 Johan Jeuring
  
wo 11-1338-45 BBL-416
46 BBL-461
Contents:Software usually works with structured information; think of Web-browsers and HTML-documents. This structure can be represented by a data type or a DTD (Document Type Definition). If such a type changes, all programs that work on that type have to be changed too, although often the central problem does not change.

In the course on generic programming we will discuss methods with which problems can be formulated and solved for arbitrary data types or DTDs. The result is a generic program. An example of a generic program is a program for pattern matching: finding occurrences of a patterns in a given value. This problem is well known in the domain of strings, but it is equally important for trees or matrices. By specialising to a given type we get a normal, type-specific program. Many design patterns are also instances of generic programs.

In the course we will discuss generic programming by means of a number of example problems. You will also see some basic lambda calculus, which can be used to type-check and specialize generic programs. We will use the programming language Generic Haskell, an extension of Haskell that supports generic programming, in particular on XML related problems.

Literature:The literature consists of Andres Löh's PhD thesis, and a number of articles that will be distributed during the course.
Course form:Lectures, exercises and/or practicals that have to be handed in and/or presented.
Exam form:A student will be graded by means of the exercises/practicals that will have to be handed in.
Minimum effort to qualify for 2nd chance exam:Om aan de aanvullende toets te mogen meedoen is ontbreken van ten hoogte 1 toetsactiviteit toegestaan.
Description:We will discuss the following topics. Minor changes might be made before the course starts.
  • A polymorphic lambda calculus
  • Type-indexed functions
  • Kind-indexed types
  • Dependencies between type-indexed functions
  • XML,DTD,Schema
  • HaXml, XML-Haskell data bindings
  • Generic programming for XML tools
  • Specialization
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