Specialisation of higher-order functions for debugging

Abstract

Because functions are abstract values without convenient print representations, implementing debuggers which support higher-order code is a challenge. We present an algorithm for statically specialising higher-order functions and encoding higher-order values to allow printing. We define our algorithm for a small functional language and discuss how it may be extended to support sophisticated features of modern functional programming languages. This research forms part of a project1Supported by the Australian Research Council. to build a declarative debugger for Haskell, based primarily on source-to-source transformation. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.