I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a compiler for the untyped lambda calculus 1 for a while; and now that I’m on vacation, I finally managed to refactor out some time to spend on it. The first iteration, echoes 2, generates horrible, but runnable code. It reads λ expressions (via a lispy syntax) and compiles them to plain ol’ x86-64 assembly, runnable pending getting linked into the runtime. It understands a tiny bit more than pure lambda calculus – echoes has native support for booleans, integers and if statements. The compiled code obeys lazy call-by-name 3 semantics.

A source term (a closed term in lambda calculus + integers and booleans) goes through the following phases:

1. Lambda lifting – closures are eliminated by passing in explicit arguments for each closed variable. λ x. λ y. x + y gets lifted into λ x. (λ y x. x + y) x, for example. This allows echoes to lift the inner λ y x. x + y out of the function. Note that support for currying is still needed, which the runtime provides.

2. Conversion to HIR – HIR is a “high-level intermediate representation” that the (lifted) lambda functions are compiled to. HIR is an SSA based representation that is created and manipulated using the Hoopl framework. After its creation, and some basic DFA-based optimization (made rather easy by Hoopl and the high level nature of HIR), it is lowered to LIR.

3. Lowering HIR to LIR — LIR is a “low-level intermediate representation” that HIR flow graph is lowered to. LIR too is an SSA based representation based around the constraint that each LIR instruction should be “easily” compilable to a (list of) machine instruction(s), for some loose definition of “easily”. As an example, forcing a value (causing a method invocation if the value was a lazy thunk) is done by ForceHN in HIR, but is a subgraph in LIR that checks if the value to be forced actually needs forcing before calling into the runtime. Echoes doesn’t have a proper register allocator, a “null” register allocator is run that simply spills each virtual register to a stack slot and inserts appropriate loads and stores.

4. LIR to x86 – almost by design, each LIR instruction can be lowered into a bunch of x86 instructions without much hassle. This is then serialized into a list of strings and written out to a .S file, which can then by linked to the runtime.

5. The Runtime – the runtime provides a bunch of functions that allow a compiled program to allocate memory and “force” values. I haven’t written a GC yet (that should be an interesting, separate project on its own) and right now programs just leak all their memory.

The project 2 consists of around 1500 lines of Haskell (for the compiler) and around 200 lines of C / assembly (for the runtime).

## Currying and Forcing

Each value encountered by a running program is either an integer, a boolean, or a partially or fully applied function. The lower two bits of each value are tagged and the semantic value is stored directly (unboxed) in the higher bits for integers and booleans.

Partially applied functions (called closures in the code-base) are represented by linked lists. The last node of such lists have the type clsr_base_node_t (a struct defined in Runtime/runtime.h) with the layout

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|               |                |
| Code Pointer  | Argument count |
|               |                |
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Code Pointer field points to the (compiled) out-of-line function that implements this closure. The Argument Count slot holds the number of arguments accepted by that code pointer. Other nodes (typed as clsr_app_node_t in C) of this linked list have the layout

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|              |                |          |
| Next Pointer | Arguments left | Argument |
|              |                |          |
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Next Pointer is the usual next field in a linked list. Arguments Left is the number of arguments that can be further applied to this partially applied function. A clsr_app_node_t with Arguments Left set to 0 is fully saturated, and applying any more arguments to it will result in a runtime error; it can only be “forced”. The Argument field holds the argument that was applied to construct the clsr_app_node_t. For instance, the expression f x y will be represented as (assuming f is an out-of-line function with arity 2):

+++++     +++++     +++++
| *-|---> | *-|---> | f |
+++++     +++++     +++++
| 0 |     | 1 |     | 2 |
+++++     +++++     +++++
| y |     | x |
+++++     +++++


These two kinds of closure nodes can be told apart by the tags in the pointers pointing to them. This linked list representation makes “pushing” arguments O(1), and sharing data easy. When forcing a fully saturated node, the arguments are collected into a buffer (to provide O(1) and simple access to individual arguments) and passed as a parameter to the out-of-line function.

## Role of Haskell’s Type System

I haven’t written a single Haskell program without noticing the benefits conferred by a well-designed type system. Hoopl, especially, makes generating incorrect control-flow graphs compile-time errors. Consider mapConcatGraph from Utils/Graph.hs, with the type

forall n n' m. (UniqueMonad m, NonLocal n, NonLocal n') =>
(n C O -> m (Graph n' C O),
n O O -> m (Graph n' O O),
n O C -> m (Graph n' O C)) ->
Graph n C C -> m (Graph n' C C)

which can be used to “expand” nodes or instructions in a Hoopl flow graph into subgraphs (this is used to implement the HIR to LIR lowering operation). The type itself states and enforces the property that a node with a single (or multiple) entry (or exit) can be replaced only with a graph with a single (respectively multiple) entry (respectively exit). Without this constraint, keeping the whole operation well-defined would be difficult. The subgraphs don’t need to be straight lines of code; a subgraph with a single entry and a single exit could very well look like this:

{ Graph Entry }
If condition Then Goto LblX
Else Goto LblY

LblX: Goto LblZ

LblY: Goto LblZ

LblZ:
{ Graph Exit }


However, the fact that the graph has a single entry and exit means that it can be “spliced” into the middle of a basic block in the place of some instruction unambiguously; which would, in this case split the original basic block into two and create two more basic blocks. More importantly, I could not have implemented such a function with weaker constraints and guarantees – the “well-formedness” of CFGs are ingrained into the very types used to represent them.

## Future Work

A minimum working prototype has made a lot of fun sub-projects possible, some of which I will definitely work on. Two of the most important ones at this point are a tracing GC and a register allocator. Other ideas that sound interesting:

1. Implement CPS conversion and some of the techniques mentioned by Olin Sivers in “Taming Lambda” 4.

2. Elide type checks using basic data-flow analysis.

3. LIR doesn’t get any optimization passes, despite being in a very optimization friendly form. This should be fixed.