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Idris, a general-purpose dependently typed programming language: Design and implementation

Part of: JFP Research Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

EDWIN BRADY
EDWIN BRADY*
Affiliation:
School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9SX, UK (e-mail: ecb10@st-andrews.ac.uk)
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Abstract

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Many components of a dependently typed programming language are by now well understood, for example, the underlying type theory, type checking, unification and evaluation. How to combine these components into a realistic and usable high-level language is, however, folklore, discovered anew by successive language implementors. In this paper, I describe the implementation of Idris, a new dependently typed functional programming language. Idris is intended to be a general-purpose programming language and as such provides high-level concepts such as implicit syntax, type classes and do notation. I describe the high-level language and the underlying type theory, and present a tactic-based method for elaborating concrete high-level syntax with implicit arguments and type classes into a fully explicit type theory. Furthermore, I show how this method facilitates the implementation of new high-level language constructs.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 23 , Issue 5 , September 2013 , pp. 552 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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