Programming Research Group Technical Monograph PRG-34

Simon B Jones

August 1983, 33 pages + Appendix, ISBN 0-902928-19-8

This document is one of a pair [PRG-34 and PRG-42] reporting the results of the Functional Operating Systems project commenced at Oxford in February 1982.

The report is divided into two parts: the development of an abstract machine to support a purely functional systems programming language (this document), and the exploration of a spectrum of functional, distributed operating systems (PRG-42).

The two aspects of the work progressed together, driving and supporting each other. So a certain amount of the narrative text is common to both reports (in particular the Introduction), and the reports may be read independently. Nevertheless, the reports must be taken together to provide a full record of the project, as the technical details are complementary.