NoisyCode

f(x) -> ~dac

Introducing MLFE

What

ML-Flavoured Erlang is a statically typed language with basic parametric polymorphism (generics) for the Erlang VM that I’ve been hacking away at in my spare time since roughly the beginning of 2016. I’m making the repository public now for version 0.1.0 with the Apache 2.0 license as I think I’ve hit the point of it being “not entirely useless”. Currently every type is inferred as there are no type annotations and the error messages leave much to be desired but it works. Here’s a simple example module:

module example_module

/* A function that adds 2 to an integer.  If you try to call this
   with a float you'll get a type error.
*/
add2 x = x + 2

// a basic ADT, just no-argument type constructors:
type even_odd Even | Odd

// Convert an integer to the basic ADT:
even_or_odd x = match x % 2 with
    0 -> Even
  | _ -> Odd

It’s written in Erlang using leex and yecc for parsing and the cerl module to build a Core Erlang AST for compilation by Erlang’s compile module. I had to build the docs for cerl directly as they don’t seem to be generally hosted anywhere. If you’re curious and want to explore, you can find the source for cerl in your Erlang distribution’s compiler lib. For OSX, Erlang 18.3’s compiler source installed by Homebrew on my machine lives in the following folder:

/usr/local/Cellar/erlang/18.3/lib/erlang/lib/compiler-6.0.3

I used edoc to generate API docs and keep them around locally for reference.

The MLFE repository has some basic getting started help in the README but the user experience is rough around the edges to put it mildly. Those of you familiar already with Erlang will note the distinct (temporary) absence of binaries and maps as well.

Why

I started working on this for two reasons: I wanted something like the various forms of ML ADTs to be available on the Erlang VM along with static typing (I like the concision and the help), and I wanted to learn more about how type systems are implemented.

Much of the ADT requirement can be satisfied by atoms and tuples in Erlang proper but it always ends up feeling a bit cumbersome and while dialyzer is great, it feels like I have to work pretty hard to properly constrain contracts to what I really want. None of this stops me for reaching for Erlang when it’s a good fit, it’s just a friction point I wanted to try to smooth out.

How

Critical to this happening at all were the following resources:

What’s Next

For version 0.2.0 it’s all mostly low-hanging fruit:

  • binaries
  • maps
  • quoted atoms
  • a test form/macro
  • do notation/side effects

I’d like to write a basic rebar3 plugin for it as well to simplify working with Erlang since so much functionality is going to depend on mixing with it for the time being. Longer term the type inferencer needs to be substantially reworked and possibly even rewritten. Specific goals there:

  • logging of typing decisions tied to reference cells and binding points (function and variable names)
  • proper garbage collection of reference cells, probably abandoning processes for this and using something like ETS
  • always generalizing type variables

The incomplete short-list of things I’d like to see in 1.0.0:

  • records with structural pattern matching. I want to be able to match on a subset of fields.
  • type annotations
  • anonymous functions
  • pattern matching in function definitions, e.g. f (x, y) = x + y to destructure a tuple without an explicit match ... with ...
  • an Emacs mode so I don’t have to manually indent things
  • something like go fmt. My intention is to integrate comments with the AST partially to enable this.

Contributing and Discussing

Contributions are welcome subject to the licence and code of conduct as specified in the project repository. I lurk in #erlounge on freenode as j14159 and I’m on Twitter with the same username.

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