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arXiv2011

Multi-Level Languages are Generalized Arrows

Multi-level languages and Arrows both facilitate metaprogramming, the act of writing a program which generates a program. The arr function required of all Arrows turns arbitrary host language expressions into guest language expressions; because of this, Arrows may be used for metaprogramming only when the guest language is a superset of the host language. This restriction is also present in multi-level languages which offer unlimited cross-level persistence. This paper introduces generalized arrows and proves that they generalize Arrows in the following sense: every Arrow in a programming language arises from a generalized arrow with that language's term category as its codomain. Generalized arrows impose no containment relationship between the guest language and host language; they facilitate heterogeneous metaprogramming. The category having all generalized arrows as its morphisms and the category having all multi-level languages as its morphisms are isomorphic categories. This is proven formally in Coq, and the proof is offered as justification for the assertion that multi-level languages are generalized arrows. Combined with the existence of a particular kind of retraction in the host language, this proof can be used to define an invertible translation from two-level terms to one-level terms parameterized by a generalized arrow instance. This is ergonomically significant: it lets guest language providers write generalized arrow instances while the users of those guest languages write multi-level terms. This is beneficial because implementing a generalized arrow instance is easier than modifying a compiler, whereas writing two-level terms is easier than manipulating generalized arrow terms.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2010

Multi-Stage Programs are Generalized Arrows

The lambda calculus, subject to typing restrictions, provides a syntax for the internal language of cartesian closed categories. This paper establishes a parallel result: staging annotations, subject to named level restrictions, provide a syntax for the internal language of Freyd categories, which are known to be in bijective correspondence with Arrows. The connection is made by interpreting multi-stage type systems as indexed functors from polynomial categories to their reindexings. This result applies only to multi-stage languages which are (1) homogeneous, (2) allow cross-stage persistence and (3) place no restrictions on the use of structural rules in typing derivations. Removing these restrictions and repeating the construction yields generalized arrows, of which Arrows are a particular case. A translation from well-typed multi-stage programs to single-stage GArrow terms is provided. The translation is defined by induction on the structure of the proof that the multi-stage program is well-typed, relying on information encoded in the proof's use of structural rules. Metalanguage designers can now factor out the syntactic machinery of metaprogramming by providing a single translation from staging syntax into expressions of generalized arrow type. Object language providers need only implement the functions of the generalized arrow type class in point-free style. Object language users may write metaprograms over these object languages in a point-ful style, using the same binding, scoping, abstraction, and application mechanisms in both the object language and metalanguage. This paper's principal contributions are the GArrow definition of Figures 2 and 3, the translation in Figure 5 and the category-theoretic semantics of Definition 16. An accompanying Coq proof formalizes the type system, translation procedure, and key theorems.

cs.PL↗