Lambda the Ultimate

From the 2005 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML, here is An Applicative Control-Flow Graph Based on Huet's Zipper, by Norman Ramsey and João Dias.

We are using ML to build a compiler that does low-level optimization. To support optimizations in classic imperative style, we built a control-flow graph using mutable pointers and other mutable state in the nodes. This decision proved unfortunate: the mutable flow graph was big and complex, it led to many bugs. We have replaced it by a smaller, simpler, applicative flow graph based on Huet's (1997) zipper. The new flow graph is a success; this paper presents its design and shows how it leads to a gratifyingly simple implementation of the dataflow framework developed by Lerner, Grove, and Chambers (2002).