Technical reports

Ponder and its type system

J. Fairbairn

November 1982, 42 pages

DOI: 10.48456/tr-31

Abstract

This note describes the programming language “Ponder”, which is designed according to the principles of referencial transparency and “orthogonality” as in [vWijngaarden 75]. Ponder is designed to be simple, being functional with normal order semantics. It is intended for writing large programmes, and to be easily tailored to a particular application. It has a simple but powerful polymorphic type system.

The main objective of this note is to describe the type system of Ponder. As with the whole of the language design, the smallest possible number of primitives is built in to the type system. Hence for example, unions and pairs are not built in, but can be constructed from other primitives.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-31,
  author =	 {Fairbairn, J.},
  title = 	 {{Ponder and its type system}},
  year = 	 1982,
  month = 	 nov,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-31.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-31},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-31}
}