A categorical and graphical treatment of closure conversion

Ralf Schweimeier, University of Sussex
Alan Jeffrey, University of Sussex and DePaul University

COGS, University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH, UK CTI, DePaul University
243 South Wabash Ave.
Chicago IL 60604, USA

November 1998

This document describes a categorically motivated graphical presentation of the closure conversion phase of a compiler.

A categorical and graphical treatment of closure conversion is a paper which has been submitted to MFPS 99. It is also available as PostScript.
An implementation of the algorithm discussed here is also available: it graphically presents the phases of lambda-lifting, showing how each step is justified by categorical axioms.
This work is based on Flow graphs and semantics of programs, available electronically in America or Europe.
You can also download this whole site as a 163k zip file.

These papers contain Java, so it may take a while to download this page. You may need to switch Java on (under Netscape 4 this is Edit / Preferences / Advanced / Enable Java).