A parallel variant of ML using skeletons being developed (April 1994) as part of Tore Bratvold's PhD in the Department of Computing and Electronic Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. Programs are written in a subset of Standard ML, and parallelism is extracted from the use of certain higher-order functions. The SkelML compiler uses profiling information together with skeleton performance models to distinguish useful from non-useful parallelism. An important feature is the ability to perform transformations between skeletons to improve performance. Skeletons currently supported are map, filter, fold, pipe (implicitly extracted from function application) and various combinations of these. See also paraML. E-mail: Tore A Bratvold <tore@cee.hw.ac.uk>.

Meta Language

1. <robotics> Manipulator Language. IBM language for handling robots. 2. Meta Language. R. Milner <rm@lfcs.edinburgh.ac.uk> et al, 1973. A strict higher-order functional language. It was the first language to include polymorphic typing which was statically-checked. It also had garbage collection and a formal semantics. It began as the metalanguage for the Edinburgh LCF proof assistant. (LCF="Logic for Computable Functions") People soon noticed that ML could be a useful general programming language and stand-alone versions were implemented. Standard ML (SML) is a descendant of these (and related languages such as Hope). The "metalanguage" aspect has long since disappeared from the language itself (although there are some systems that still use it that way). The historical name is now so inappropriate that asking what ML stands for is like asking what C or Unix stands for. It doesn't stand for anything; it just is. LCF ML was implemented in Stanford LISP. Cardelli (1981) implemented ML in Pascal using the {Functional Abstract Machine} (FAM). It has been significantly redesigned to produce Standard ML and Lazy ML. ["A Metalanguage for Interactive Proof in LCF", M.J.C. Gordon et al, 5th POPL, ACM 1978]. (2006-07-21)

Mail List

<networking> The country code for Mali. (1999-01-27)

A light-weight implementation of Standard ML written by Sergei Romanenko <sergei-romanenko@refal.msk.su> of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics with assistance from Peter Sestoft <sestoft@dina.kvl.dk>, {Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University}. Moscow ML is based on {CAML Light}. Version: 1.20 implements the Standard ML Core language. The sublanguage of Modules implemented by Moscow ML contains signatures and non-nested structures, and identifies structures with source files. It is certainly less expressive than the full Standard ML Modules language, but the type-safe separate compilation facility is simple, useful, and easy to use. It is the intention to implement the full Standard ML Modules language (including functors) in due course. Compilation of a signature produces a compiled interface file, which is used when compiling other signatures and structures. Compilation of a structure produces a bytecode file. Bytecode files are compact and load fast. For instance, a 3250-line program consisting of 24 structures and 17 signatures compiles to 221 KB of bytecode and 241 KB of compiled signatures. Starting the ML system and loading the 24 bytecode files takes 1-2 cpu seconds plus network delays, less that 5 seconds real time in all. Release 1.20 permits loading of precompiled bytecode files into the top-level interactive session. The next release will be able to create stand-alone executables by linking bytecode files. There is a mechanism for adding basis libraries, as in {Caml Light}. Release 1.20 includes the basis libraries Array, List, and Vector and the MS-DOS version includes the Graphics library from Caml Light. In principle, Moscow ML can be compiled on any platform supported by Caml Light. So far we have tried {Intel 80386}-based IBM PCs running MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, OS/2 or Linux, DEC MIPS running Ultrix, DEC Alpha running OSF/1, Sun-4 running SunOS, HP9000 running HP/UX, SGI MIPS running IRIX 5. Moscow ML is particularly useful when fast compilation and modest storage consumption are more important than fast program execution. Thanks to the efficient Caml Light run-time system used in Moscow ML, it compiles fast and uses little memory, typically 5-10 times less memory than SML/NJ 0.93 and 2-3 times less than Edinburgh ML. Yet the bytecode is only 3 to 10 times slower than SML/NJ 0.93 compiled native code (fast on {IBM PCs}, slower on RISCs). {DOS (ftp://dina.kvl.dk/pub/Peter.Sestoft/mosml/mos12bin.zip)}. {Linux (ftp://dina.kvl.dk:pub/Peter.Sestoft/mosml/linux-mos12bin.tar.gz)}. {Source (ftp://dina.kvl.dk:pub/Peter.Sestoft/mosml/mos12src.tar.gz)}. Caml Light 0.61 and gcc are required to recompile Moscow ML for Unix or Caml Light 0.61, djgpp, Perl, and Borland C++ version 2.0 (or later) to recompile Moscow ML for DOS. (1994-12-12)

<language> (CML) A concurrent extension of SML/NJ written by J. Reppy at Cornell University in 1990. CML supports dynamic thread creation and synchronous message passing on typed channels. Threads are implemented using first-class continuations. First-class synchronous operations allow users to tailor their synchronisation abstractions for their application. CML also supports both stream I/O and low-level I/O in an integrated fashion. Latest version 0.9.8, as of 1994-12-21, requires SML/NJ 0.75 or later. ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/. E-mail: <sml-bugs@research.att.com> (bugs). ["CML: A Higher-Order Concurrent Language", John H. Reppy, SIGPLAN Notices 26(6):293-305, June 1991]. (2000-08-09)

<language> (SML) Originally an attempt by Robin Milner <rm@lfcs.edinburgh.ac.uk> ca. 1984 to unify the dialects of ML, SML has evolved into a robust general-purpose language. Later versions have been maintained by D. B. MacQueen, Lal George <george@research.att.com>, and J. H. Reppy <jhr@research.att.com> at AT&T, and A. W. Appel <appel@princeton.edu>. SML is functional, with imperative programming features. It is environment based and strict. It adds to ML the call-by-pattern of Hope, recursive data types, reference types, typed exceptions, and modules. (The "core" language excludes the modules). Standard ML is polymorphically typed and its module system supports flexible yet secure large-scale programming. Standard ML of New Jersey is an optimising {native-code compiler} for Standard ML that is written in Standard ML. It runs on a wide range of architectures. The distribution also contains: an extensive library - The Standard ML of New Jersey Library, including detailed documentation; Concurrent ML (CML); eXene - an elegant interface to X11 (based on CML); SourceGroup - a separate compilation and "make" facility. Implementations: SML/NJ, POPLOG ML, Poly/ML, {Edinburgh SML}, ANU ML, Micro ML, lazy sml2c. sml2c compiles to C. See also ML Kit. Version 0.93 runs on 68000, SPARC, MIPS, HPPA, RS/6000, Intel 386, Intel 486 and Macintosh. {Manual (http://dcs.napier.ac.uk/course-notes/sml/manual.html)}. ml/">FTP from ATT (ftp://research.att.com/dist/ml/). FTP from Suny SB (ftp://sbcs.sunysb.edu/). Mailing list: sml-request@cs.cmu.edu. ["A Proposal for Standard ML", R. Milner, ACM Symp on LISP and Functional Prog 1984, pp. 184-197]. (1995-12-24)