Reinking, Alex and Xie, Ningning and De Moura, Leonardo and Leijen, Daan
year
2021
Functional but in-place (FBIP) programming paradigm. Allows writing mutating algorithms in purely functional way.
This is analogous to tail calls which allow writing loops with recursion. But here, FBIP allows writing mutating algorithms
The algorithm emits precise reference counting instructions so that non-cyclic references are dropped as soon as possible. They call it garbage free because only live data is retained.
Precise ref counting enables many further optimizations:
drop specialization removes many ref counting operations in the fast path
reuse analysis allows updating immutable data in-place
reuse specialization removes many in-place field updates
The use of reference counting means that no runtime system is needed and Koka can link with C/C++ libraries.
