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Alan Van Dam

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Name: Alan van Dam
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Email: alan@vandamnet.nl
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Homepage: http://www.vandamnet.nl

-----+++ Thesis

Alan van Dam. *Simplifying the Simplifier. <nop>HsOpt: a modular, rewrite rule based simplifier for the Helium compiler, a non-strict functional compiler.* Institute of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Master's thesis INF/SCR-03-25, July 7, 2003. ([[http://www.cs.uu.nl/~visser/ftp/Dam03.pdf][pdf]])

----+++ Abstract

Modern compilers optimize code during the compilation process. The goal of the optimizations is to obtain a program that is semantically equivalent, executes faster and uses less memory. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler also uses a simplifier. This simplifier is not modular and difficult to extend. The <nop>HsOpt simplifier is a 'simplified' GHC simplifier. The <nop>HsOpt simplifier is modular and relatively easy to extend. <nop>HsOpt is based on the paradigm of correctness preserving rewrite rules. The transformations can be applied separately. <nop>HsOpt interacts with the Helium compiler, a compiler for a large subset of Haskell. Helium uses a naive pattern matcher compiler which results in straightforward intermediate Core code. <nop>HsOpt simplifies most of the straightforward code. The result is Core code that could have been produced by an intelligent pattern match compiler. The simplified programs execute 10-15% faster and uses 0-25% less memory.

----+++ Links

   * Stratego:SimplifyingTheSimplifier
   * Stratego:HsOpt
   * http://www.vandamnet.nl/hsopt