Re: SHEEP

["Krishnaswami, Neel" <address@hidden>]

Michael Vanier [mailto:mvanier@cs.caltech.edu] wrote:
> 
> I'm intrigued by this statement:
> 
> [Sheep will have] automatic memory management without garbage 
> collection (linearity) ...
> 
> Can any of the functional programming gurus expand on this?

Not a guru, but this sounds like a reference to linear types.
The basic idea is that if you can guarantee that an object
is referred to only once -- ie, it's unshared -- then storage 
management becomes much easier. 

For a non-math-y introduction, look at Henry Baker's paper
"'Use-Once' Variables and Linear Objects -- Storage Management, 
Reflection and Multi-Threading", at 

  http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul/hbaker/Use1Var.html

If you want to actually try this out with running code, a functional 
language that explicitly supports linear types is Concurrent Clean: 
 
  http://www.cs.kun.nl/~clean/


--
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@cswcasa.com