Re: [Axiom-developer] B#

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Page, Bill" <address@hidden> writes:

| Gaby, 
| 
| On Friday, March 24, 2006 9:49 AM you wrote:
| > 
| > Bill Page writes:
| > ...
| > | Have you read the actual B# paper? There is no "hand
| > | waving". The user interacts with only one type - the
| > | UserType. The UserType in turn has a well-defined
| > | relationship to the underlying types defined in the
| > | Axiom library.
| > 
| > By now, I have some familiarity with the B# paper.  I do
| > believe there is a "hand waving" concerning how the B#
| > interpreter works with types.  The subsection "Types" in
| > §5.3 does not say much.
| 
| Can you give a couple of specific examples of the kind of
| design issues where you think the authors are being too
| vague and the problems might be difficult to solve?

Yes; take the example on page 39 undr subsection "Types".  What are
the rules that the type inferencer uses to infer the type 
L_{&s &bullet; &n &bullet}?  The asnwer is I have to AXIOM's rules.
Now, where are the AXIOM's rules defined.  I turned over the paper I
mentioned earlier, but I can't fiind the real rules.

Currently, I'm just parsing B# -- so I don't get to translate yet.
[and the parser is a quick&dirty Perl script; I'll switch to BOOT
later and I'm more conformtable with it.]

| > I also read the paper 
| > 
| >    "The Type Inference and Coercion Facilities in the
| >    Scracthpad II Interpreter" by the duo Sutor & Jenks.
| > 
| > The description there is informal, sufficient to convey the
| > general feeling of how the type system works.  However,
| > it lacks the "essence" that would make it acceptable to a
| > compiler writer, or even at a contemporary programming
| > language conferences :-)
| 
| Did I just see you gesture wildly with your hands? ;)

:-)

| > I suspect the meat must be the papers refered to as [1] [3]
| > [4], [5], [7] [8].  I currently have access to none of them,
| > except [1].
| 
| Please let me know if you manage to get copies of some of
| these. I am trying hard to pull together a complete reference
| library of Axiom design papers and publications on the Axiom
| Portal.

The copies I have are from the ACM portal, so I don't think I have
permission to put them on Axiom's portal.  The ones I'm missing are
IBM related; maybe Tim can help there?

-- Gaby