Date: Sat, 7 Apr 90 16:49:58 BST From: Dave Berry I've compiled a list of ML textbooks, implementations, and so forth. Here it is. If I've got anything wrong, please let me know, because I intend to use this to reply to e-mail queries, and it may also form the basis of an LFCS publicity leaflet. Oh, and I may post it to the USENET comp.lang.misc and comp.lang.functional newsgroups. Dave Berry. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION, THE DEFINITION, TEXTS, COURSES, MAILING LIST, IMPLEMENTATIONS. INTRODUCTION Standard ML is a statically scoped interactive functional language with a polymorphic static type system, polymorphic references, polymorphic exceptions, and a sophisticated modules system. It has a formal semantics, which won it the British Computer Society's Technical Award for 1987. It is a general purpose programming language which is currently used for formal verification, VLSI work, microprocessor design, graphical interfaces, and compilers. THE DEFINITION. Robin Milner, Mads Tofte and Robert Harper The Definition of Standard ML MIT, 1990. Milner and Tofte are writing a commentary on the Definition. TEXTS. The first book is quite slow-paced and is aimed at people learning to program. It doesn't cover the modules system. Ake Wikstrom Functional Programming Using Standard ML Prentice Hall 1987 ISBN: 0-13-331661-0 The next book goes at a faster pace, and includes an introduction to the modules system. It also includes sections on denotational semantics, lambda calculus and implementation techniques. Chris Reade Elements of Functional Programming Addison-Wesley 1989 ISBN: 0-201-12915-9 The following report is available from the LFCS (Dorothy McKie, dam@lfcs.ed.ac.uk) and costs 5 pounds or 10 US dollars. It covers all of Standard ML. Robert Harper Introduction to Standard ML LFCS Report Series ECS-LFCS-86-14 Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science Department of Computer Science University of Edinburgh Nov. 1986 (revised Jan. 1989 by Nick Rothwell and Kevin Mitchell) The following report is available from the LFCS (Dorothy McKie, dam@lfcs.ed.ac.uk) and is free. It includes an introduction to Standard ML and three lectures on the modules system. Mads Tofte Four Lectures on Standard ML LFCS Report Series ECS-LFCS-89-73 Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science Department of Computer Science University of Edinburgh March 1989 Larry Paulson of Cambridge University has a book in preparation. COURSES The LFCS runs week-long courses on Standard ML twice a year. The first two days are optional and cover the core language; the other three days cover the modules system, with an introduction to specification and refinement in the Extended ML algebraic specification language. Contact edith@lfcs.ed.ac.uk for more information. MAILING LIST The worldwide sml mailing list covers all aspects of Standard ML. Subscription requests from Europe to ml-local-request@lfcs.ed.ac.uk. Subscription requests from elsewhere to sml-request@cs.cmu.edu Contributions to sml@cs.cmu.edu. IMPLEMENTATIONS There are 6 implementations of Standard ML available now, which are described below. There are another 3 being written, one of which is described below. They are mostly interactive incremental compilers. They all implement most of the standard faithfully; at present they differ slightly in some obscure corners. I've tried to give some indication of their relative performance on reasonably sized programs, but performance depends on many factors (such as the size of real memory on your machine). Poly/ML. Poly/ML produces native code for Sun3 UNIX systems. A SPARC version is being developed. A VAX version exists, but isn't currently supported. Poly/ML is about the speed of a good compiled Common Lisp. For my uses it needs 3-6M of heap space. Poly/ML uses a persistent store, and comes with a make system and a function that lets you define functor bodies interactively. Poly/ML is distributed by Abstract Hardware Ltd. (ahl@ahl.co.uk). It costs 500 pounds for an academic site licence and 2,000 pounds per machine for industrial users with multiple and site licences by negotiation. Standard ML of New Jersey. Version 0.44 (beta-release) of Standard ML of New Jersey generates native code for Vax, 68020, SPARC or MIPS Unix systems. It needs about twice as much heap space as Poly/ML, though this varies with the application. It produces code that runs about twice as fast as Poly/ML, and takes slightly longer to compile it. SML-NJ comes with ML implementations of LEX and YACC, and a separate compilation system. It is copyright AT&T but is freely distributable. Version 1 will be released soon under the same terms. SML-NJ is available by anonymous ftp from research.att.com. Login as "anonymous" with your user name as password. Put ftp in binary modem And copy the (compress tar) files you need from the directory dist/ml. You only need the mo.*.tar.Z files for your machines. Alternatively mail dbm@research.att.com. In the UK, it is available from the LFCS (see below). Poplog ML. Standard ML is supported as part of the Poplog system, which also provides incremental compilers for Pop-11, Common Lisp and Prolog in a common environment with shared data-structures, so that mixed language programming is possible. The integrated editor and HELP mechanism support online teaching aids. POPLOG X Windows interface will be provided from 2nd Quarter 1990 (May or June we hope). Performance comparable to Poly/ML (when last tested) but depends on program. Process size starts from about 1.5Mbytesd (including Editor) on Sun3. Poplog is available for VAX+VMS, VAX+Ultrix, VAX+Bsd 4.2/3, Sun-2,3,4, Sun386i, SPARCstation, Solbourne, Sequent Symmetry (with Dynix), HP M680?0+Unix workstations and Apollo+Unix. Versions for MAC-II with A/UX, DECstation 3100 and MIPS will be available shortly. UK educational users should contact School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex (alim@uk.ac.sussex.cogs). People in the USA or Canada should contact Computable Functions Inc. (pop@cs.umass.edu. All others should contact Integral Solutions Ltd. (isl@integ.uucp). Commercial prices start around 7,500 pounds. Educational discount 85% . Special prices for UK academics. Edinburgh ML 4.0. Edinburgh ML 4.0 is an implementation of the core language (without the module system). It uses a bytecode interpreter, which is written in C and runs on any machine with 32 bit words, a continuous address space and a correct C compiler. The bytecode interpreter can be compiled with switches to avoid the buggy parts of the C compilers that we've used it with (as far as I know none of them worked correctly). Ed. ML 4.0 typically uses 1.5-4M of heap space. It is about a quarter of the speed of Poly/ML. Ed. ML 4.0 is available from us. People in the UK can get by e-mail; we also distribute it on Sun/Apollo cartridge or 1/4" tape (tar or VMS format) for a small fee (50 pounds for academic sites and LFCS affiliates, 100 pounds for other commercial organisations). Mail lfcs@ed.ac.uk for more information. ANU ML ANU ML is descended from Cardelli's ML Pose 3. It implements the core language of the standard and an old version of modules. It incrementally compiles to native code on Sun-3, Vax/Ultrix, Pyramid and MacII/AUX. (It is intended to standardize modules and do the port to Sun-4 in the near future.) ANU ML has a program development system with strong support for debugging (tracing, automatic retesting etc.) and has been extended with a built-in type complex. The designers claim that it is as economical with memory as Edinburgh ML but closer in speed to NJ ML. ANU ML is still considered to be in beta release since exceptions have been standardized quite recently. It is available from Malcolm Newey, CS Dept., Australian National University (mcn@anucsd.anu.oz.au) by arrangement; soon to be available by ftp. Rutherford ML. Rutherford ML is an implementation of the core language that runs on Franz Lisp. It is no longer maintained, and is only distributed with the Cambridge LCF system (which it supports). Rutherford also supply an SML-YACC parser generator, which runs on Edinburgh ML and Poly/ML, and will soon run on New Jersey ML. Both SML-YACC and Cambridge LCF are available from Brian Matthews (bmm@uk.ac.rl.inf). The Kit Compiler. The LFCS are developing an implementation to serve as a base for experiments in language design. The code reflects the semantics as directly as possible. At present the Kit Compiler can only be run on another implementation of Standard ML. Run like this it is slow and needs at least 16M of heap space. Eventually we hope to have a version about the size and speed of Edinburgh ML. The Kit Compiler is not available yet. Ten15 ML. Harlequin limited is developing a Standard ML compiler for the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Malvern. The target for the compiler is an algebra specifying an abstract machine. The algebra is called Ten15 and was developed by the RSRE. The ML compiler produces an encoding in Ten15 which can then be translated into machine code for a variety of machines. Harlequin MLWorks. Harlequin limited are currently developing MLWorks to support programming in Standard ML. This product will provide an integrated design and development environment supporting programming in the small and in the large. The environment will also support the specification of ML programs using Extended ML. Harlequin's product is being developed with both the industrial and academic user in mind. MLWorks will be available for use on a large number of hardware platforms. Integrated within MLWorks will be an industrial-strength compiler for Standard ML. Harlequin plans to launch the compiler separately during the first quarter of 1991. OBSOLETE VERSIONS Edinburgh ML 3.5. Edinburgh ML 3.5 is a predecessor of Edinburgh ML 4.0. It uses the old style exceptions, and includes an obsolete version of the modules system. It is mentioned here because it is available on the Macintosh. Edinburgh ML 3.5 is available in the UK by e-mail from the LFCS. We will also distribute it on a tape, as for Edinburgh ML 4.0. It is also available from Meta Software (Peter Hendersen, pbh@sbsc.sunysb.edu).