Programming language concepts

Programming Language Concepts uses a functional programming language (F#) as the metalanguage in which to present all concepts and examples, and thus has an operational flavour, enabling practical experiments and exercises. It includes basic concepts such as abstract syntax, interpretation, stack machines, compilation, type checking, and garbage collections technique, as well as more advanced topics such as polymorphic types, type inference using the union-find algorithm and levels, co- and contravariance, continuations, and on-the-fly peephole optimization in backwards code generation.

Introduction.-Interpreters and Compilers.-From Concrete Syntax to Abstract Syntax.- A First-Order Functional Language.- Higher-Order Functions.- Polymorphic Types.- Imperative Languages,- Compiling Micro-C.- Real-World Abstract Machines.- Garbage Collection.- Continuations.- A Locally Optimizing Compilier.- Reflection.- Runtime Code Generation.- F# Crash Course.- References.- Index.