Programming Research Group Technical Monograph PRG-42

Simon B Jones

February 1985, 44 pages, ISBN 0-902928-25-2

This report investigates the design and implementation of operating systems written in a purely functional style, exploring a variety of different designs of operating system, and the aspects of functional programming which lead themselves to these designs. The various techniques illustrated and exploited include the construction of simple interactive systems (through lazy evaluation and recursive functions of streams), streams functions as processes and networks of processes (clear modularisation of systems), sharing of resources and time dependent systems (through the use of a non-determinate choice operator), and physically distributed systems (streams are associated with remote communication lines). Functional programming provides a powerful tool in the design and implementation of such systems.

A companion report [PRG-34] describes the underlying abstract machine support required for the implementation of functional operating systems.