December 2008 - Haskell

hsc2hs can't find gcc under windows
by Curt Sampson 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

I'm trying to upgrade from ghc 6.8.3 to 6.10.1. Unfortunately, there seem to be problems with the Windows version. (I've installed it on two different machines, both Windows XP, and they've both had the same problem. Both worked fine with 6.8.3.) When I run hsc2hs, on an hsc file, I get the error, "Can't find gcc". Just as an experiment, I tried adding c:\ghc\ghc-6.10.1 to my path. That lets it find gcc, but then it can't find cc1. If I go even further down this road and add c:\ghc\ghc-6.10.1\gcc-lib to my path, it can find cc1, but then I get a stream of errors about not being able to find header files, such as HsFFI.h. Does anybody have any clues here to help me? I can provide code, or even access to the machine, if needed. We're also happy to pay for support, if someone out there is offering commercial support for ghc. cjs -- Curt Sampson <cjs(a)starling-software.com> +81 90 7737 2974 Functional programming in all senses of the word: http://www.starling-software.com

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ANNOUNCE: Cryptol now freely available
by Don Stewart 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

Galois is pleased to announce that Cryptol, the language of cryptography, is now available to the public! Cryptol is a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms, developed over the past decade by Galois for the United States National Security Agency. It has been used successfully in a number of projects, and is also in use at Rockwell Collins, Inc. Cryptol is implemented in Haskell. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) allow subject-matter experts to design solutions in using familiar concepts and constructs. Cryptol, as a DSL, allows domain experts in cryptography to design and implement cryptographic algorithms with a high degree of assurance in the correctness of their design, and at the same time, producing a high performance implementation of their algorithms. In this release, Galois has made a implementation of the Cryptol language available free of charge for non-commercial uses. More information on the blog: http://www.galois.com/blog/2008/12/24/cryptol-the-language-of-cryptography-… And at http://www.cryptol.net Enjoy!

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WI/IAT'09: Call for Workshop Proposals (Milano, Italy)
by WI-IAT'09 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

[Apologies if you receive this more than once] ============================================================== Call for Workshop Proposals 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT'09) Milano, Italy, September 15-18, 2009 http://www.wi-iat09.disco.unimib.it/WI09/WIhome.htm http://www.wi-iat09.disco.unimib.it/IAT09/IAThome.htm ******************************************************************* Workshop Proposals Due: ** January 15 **, 2009 All papers accepted for workshops will be included in the Workshop Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press, which are indexed by EI. =================================================================== The Program Committees of the 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT'09) invite proposals for Workshops. The Workshops will be held within the Conference, September 15-18, 2009 at Milano, Italy. The main goal of the WI-IAT'09 workshops is to stimulate and facilitate active exchange, interaction and comparison of approaches, methods and ideas related to specific topics, both theoretical and applied, in the general areas related to Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology. The workshops will provide an informal setting where participants will have the opportunity to discuss specific technical topics in an atmosphere that fosters the active exchange of ideas. The workshop organizers will be responsible for advertising the workshop, forming the program committees, reviewing and selecting the papers, and guaranteeing a high quality worthy of the prestige and range of the Conference. All papers accepted for workshops will be included in the Workshop Proceedings, which are expected to be published by IEEE Computer Society Press and will be available at the workshops. The workshop organizers will also have the discretion of editing selected papers (after their expansion and revision) into books or special journal issues. Workshops may be full-day or half-day. A full-day workshop should select 10-14 regular papers, while a half-day workshop should select 5-7 regular papers, from a large number of submissions. Submissions accepted as workshop papers will be allocated 4 pages in the proceedings. The workshop organizers should ensure the presence of authors of accepted papers at the workshops. Optionally, the workshop may be started or concluded by a panel focusing on interesting aspects, controversial issues, or unsolved problems to stimulate lively, thoughtful, and thought-provoking debate; we expect the workshop organizers to actively engage the audience and help them gain a deeper understanding of the issues. The goal of a panel is to debate and thus panels should always reflect more than one point of view. *** Workshop Topics Each workshop subject will focus on new research challenges and initiatives in Web Intelligence (WI) and Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT). The workshops should provide an informal and vibrant forum for researchers and industry practitioners to share their research results and practical development experiences in these two fields. Suggested workshop topics include, but are not limited to: - Web Intelligence, Brain Informatics and Cognition-inspired Computing - Intelligent e-Technology (including e-Science, e-Business, e-Learning, e-Finance, e-Government, e-Community) - Intelligent Web Interaction - Knowledge Grids and Grid Intelligence - Semantics and Ontology Engineering - Social Networks and Social Intelligence - Web Agents - Web Information Filtering and Retrieval - Web Mining and Farming - Web Monitoring and Change - Web Personalization and Recommendations - Web Scale Reasoning - Web Security, Integrity, Privacy and Trust - Web Services and Grid Services - Web Support Systems - World Wide Wisdom Web (W4) - Intelligent Web Querying - Agent Systems Modeling and Methodology - Autonomous Knowledge and Information Agents - Autonomous Auctions and Negotiation - Autonomy-Oriented Computing (AOC) - Learning and Self-Adapting Agents - Agents and Data Mining Interaction - Multiagent Systems in e-Business *** Workshop Proposal Submission Workshop proposals should include the following elements: - Title of the workshop - The organizers name, affiliation, mailing address and e-mail address - A description of the topic of the workshop (not exceeding 200 words) - Type of the workshop (full-day or half-day) - A description of how the workshop will contribute to the field of Web Intelligence and/or Intelligent Agent Technology - A short description on how the workshop will be advertised so as to ensure a sufficiently wide range of authors and high quality papers - Optionally, only for full-day workshops, the title of a proposed panel, with a brief description highlighting the reasons of interest of the issues to be debated After the acceptance of a workshop proposal the organizer(s) should: - Create a Call for papers/participation for the workshop - Create a Web page for the workshop, the link of which will be published on the Conference Web site - Create a Board of Reviewers (Program Committee) - Review and select papers - Schedule the workshop activities. Those papers selected by a workshop organizer will also be reviewed by the Workshop Co-Chairs for final acceptance. All submitted papers will be reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity. We will provide an online paper submission and review system to support the workshops. *** Important Dates - Workshop proposal submission due: January 15, 2009 - Notification to workshop proposers: January 25, 2009 - Each Workshop Organizer Sends out Call for Workshops Papers: February 5, 2009 - Due date for full workshop papers submission (4 pages): April 30, 2009 - Final acceptance by Workshop Co-Chairs: June 10, 2009 - Notification of paper acceptance to authors: June 8, 2009 - Camera-ready of accepted papers: June 30, 2009 - Workshop day: September 15, 2009 *** Workshop proposal submissions The above described workshop proposals must be submitted via e-mail (workshops.wi.iat(a)gmail.com) We look forward to your support in making 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM WI-IAT'09 workshops an exciting event. *** Workshop Co-Chairs: - Paolo Boldi, DSI, Universita' degli Studi di Milano (boldi [at> dsi.unimi.it) - Giuseppe Vizzari, DISCO, Universita' degli Studi di Milano Bicocca (vizzari [at> disco.unimib.it)

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ANN: llvm-0.4.0.1
by Lennart Augustsson 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

We have now released version 0.4.0.1 of the Haskell LLVM bindings. (This release that is quite incompatible with the old 0.0.2 release.) LLVM is a virtual machine and the bindings allow you to generate code for this virtual machine. This code can then be executed by a JIT or written to a file for further processing by the LLVM tools. The LLVM bindings has two layers. You can either use the low level bindings that is just the same as the C bindings for the LLVM. This level is quite unsafe as there is very little type checking. The recommended way is a high level binding (somewhat less complete) which eliminates many errors by leveraging the Haskell type system. A simple example, generating code for a function that adds two numbers and then calling it from Haskell: import Data.Int import LLVM.Core import LLVM.ExecutionEngine cgplus :: CodeGenModule (Function (Int32 -> Int32 -> IO Int32)) cgplus = createFunction InternalLinkage $ \ x y -> do r <- add x y ret r main = do ioplus <- simpleFunction cgplus let plus = unsafePurify ioplus print $ plus 20 22 Enjoy! Bryan O'Sullivan Lennart Augustsson

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ANN: Data.List.Split
by Brent Yorgey 21 Dec '08

21 Dec '08

I am pleased to announce the release of Data.List.Split, which provides a wide range of strategies and a unified combinator framework for splitting lists with respect to some sort of delimiter. It strives to be flexible yet simple. If you've ever wished there was a simple 'split' function you could grab from Data.List, this is the package for you---no matter which of the seventeen* slightly different ways to split a list you actually need! Just use one of the prepackaged splitting strategies, or build your own with the combinator library. Get it from Hackage: cabal install split http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/split Get the source: darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/split Get excited: http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/datalistsplit/ -Brent * Actual number may vary.

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ANN: Hoogle with more libraries
by Neil Mitchell 21 Dec '08

21 Dec '08

Hi, I am pleased to annouce that the Hoogle on http://haskell.org/hoogle will now search lots of the libraries present on hackage. For example, to search for the parse function in tagsoup, try: "parse +tagsoup" (http://haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=parse+%2Btagsoup) By default Hoogle will still search the default libraries it always has (cabal, base etc.) but now, by doing +packagename, you can search for any of the libraries listed at the bottom of this message. The work of generating the necessary search databases was done by Gwern Branwen, for which I am very grateful. This is early work, and there are certain to be bugs. For example, when searching a package String /= [Char], documentation might not always be present, constructors containing functions might be a bit iffy, not all packages are present, no executables are present, if you mistype the +packagename it won't say anything. Hopefully these will all be addressed over time. QUESTIONS At the moment Hoogle searches will default to the small set of packages shipped with GHC. What should Hoogle default to? What compound sets of packages should be defined? i.e. there will probably be hlp which corresponds to all the Haskell Library Platform packages. This is a community tool, and these sorts of decisions are ones for the whole community. Otherwise by default you are likely to end up searching uniplate, tagsoup, safe, filepath, proposition, homeomorphic and binarydefer :-) HELP ME I can't currently recompile Hoogle, which is a bit of an issue! The haskell.org server gives the error message "timer_create: Operation not supported" on any relatively recent binaries created by GHC. I need to be able to compile the hoogle executable and upload it so it works. I used to do this using a copy of GHC 6.6.1 installed at York, but that was recently removed (6.6.0 has a bug which crashes hoogle, 6.8+ makes use of timer_create). How easy is it to make the haskell.org server support timer_create? How easy is it to generate binaries that don't depend on it? Anyone any good advice? Please direct any follow-ups to haskell-cafe@ Thanks Neil The libraries currently supported by hoogle are: adaptive aern-net alsa-midi ansi-terminal ansi-wl-pprint anydbm applescript arff array arrows astar attoparsec autoproc avltree base64-string benchpress bencode berkeleydbxml binary-search binary bio bitset bitsyntax bktrees bloomfilter botpp brainfuck bytestring-csv bytestring-mmap bytestring bytestringparser bytestringreadp c-io cabal cabalrpmdeps carray cc-delcont cgi-undecidable cgi change-monger chasingbottoms checked christmastree chunks classify clevercss cmath codec-compression-lzf codec-libevent colock colour compact-map condorcet containers control-monad-free control-monad-omega control-timeout cordering coreerlang cpphs csv ctemplate curl data-accessor-template data-accessor data-default data-ivar data-memocombinators data-quotientref dataenc debian-binary debugtracehelpers decimal delicious delimited-text diff dlist dotgen download-curl download drhylo dsp edisonapi edisoncore edit-distance editline eeconfig encode event-handlers event-list event-monad explicit-exception extensible-exceptions external-sort fec feed ffeed fgl fieldtrip filepath finance-quote-yahoo fingertree finitemap fixpoint flickr flock formlets freesound ftgl fungen funsat garsia-wachs geoip ghc-paths glfw-ogl glfw glob glut gmap gnuplot googlechart graphics-drawingcombinators graphicsformats graphscc graphviz gravatar grotetrap hacanon-light hake happs-ixset happs-util harm harp haskeline haskeline.txt haskell-lexer haskell-src-exts haskell-src haskell98 haxml haxml.txt hcl hcodecs heap hedi hexdump hexpat hfov hgalib hgdbmi hgeometric highlighting-kate hinotify hinstaller hjavascript hjs hjscript hledger hlongurl hmarkup hmeap hmidi hmm homeomorphic hopenssl hosc hosc.txt hpc hpdf hsasa hsc3-dot hsc3-unsafe hsc3 hsc3.txt hscolour hsconfigure hsemail hsh hshhelpers hslogger hslua hsoundfile hsparrot hspr-sh hstats hstringtemplate hstringtemplatehelpers hsx-xhtml html http-shed http http.txt httpd-shed hunit hxt-filter hxt i18n icalendar iff ifs imlib indentparser infinite-search infix infixapplicative interlude io-reactive ipprint irc join json lazyarray lcs libmpd libxml lispparser list-extras listlike listzipper logfloat logict lru lub maccatcher main main.txt marked-pretty markov-chain maybet mediawiki memotrie mersenne-random-pure64 mersenne-random microbench midi mime-string mime mmap mmtl monad-loops monad-param monadlab monadprompt monadrandom mps mtl-tf mtl mtlparse mucipher multisetrewrite munkres n-m nano-md5 nanocurses nat network-dns network-multicast network non-negative numbers numeric-prelude numeric-quest obdd oeis old-locale old-time onetuple openal opengl openglcheck opml packedstring parallel parport parse-dimacs parseargs parsec parsec.txt parsedate parserfunction pcre-light peano-inf penn-treebank phonetic-code pipe pkcs1 pngload polyparse popenhs porte powermate pqc pretty prettyclass printf-mauke printf-th priority-queue probability process property-list protocol-buffers-descriptor protocol-buffers psqueue pure-fft puremd5 queue quickcheck random-access-list random ranged-sets rangemin rbr rdtsc readline refserialize regex-base regex-compat regex-pcre-builtin regex-pcre regex-posix regexpr-symbolic regexpr regexqq reord rjson rmonad rosezipper rss safe safecopy scgi sdl-image sdl-mixer sdl-ttf sdl selenium setlocale shellac-compatline shellac-editline shellac-readline shellac simple-reflect simpleargs smallcheck smtpclient smtpclient.txt sphinx sqlite state stateref statistics-fusion stb-image stemmer stm stmcontrol stmonadtrans storable-complex stream stringsearch stringtable-atom suffixtree supercollider-ht swf syb sybwidget system-inotify system-uuid tabular taglib tagsoup-ht tagsoup tar tcache template-haskell template terminfo terminfo.txt test-framework-hunit test-framework-quickcheck th-fold thih thrist tttas typehash unamb unamb.txt unicode-names unicode-normalization unicode-properties uniplate unix-compat unix-pty-light unix unlambda uri-template url utf8-light utf8-prelude utf8-string uulib uvector-algorithms value-supply vcard vty wave wavesurfer whim witness wl-pprint workflow wurfl x11-extras x11-xft xcb-types xhtml xml-parsec xml yampa yjtools zip-archive zipedit zipfold zlib

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Spam on HaskellWiki
by Ashley Yakeley 21 Dec '08

21 Dec '08

This is beginning to annoy people. Actually, someone registered several thousand accounts (of the form XxxxxXxxxx), though almost all of them have not been used. The others have been used to add spam. I can block user accounts and IP addresses, and I can grant this privilege to others on whatever basis the Haskell community think appropriate. I have CheckUser installed (allows me to find the IP addresses of a given user, and find edits from a particular IP address), and this is also a grantable privilege. However, given that the spam is coming from quite a number of IP addresses, I suspect there is some kind of botnet involved. There is a tool called "rollback" that allows one-click revert of one or more sequential edits from the same user, which makes reverting spam a one-click-per-page operation. Again, this is a grantable privilege and in any case relatively harmless. However, it is only available with MediaWiki 1.9 and later, and HaskellWiki is running MediaWiki 1.5.4, so this means doing an upgrade. The current stable release is 1.13.2. -- Ashley Yakeley

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ANN: HLint 1.0
by Neil Mitchell 20 Dec '08

20 Dec '08

Hi, I am pleased to announce HLint, a tool for making suggestions to improve your Haskell code. Previously this tool was called Dr Haskell and depended on a working installation of Yhc - both of those have now changed. HLint requires GHC 6.10*, and to install simply type: cabal update && cabal install hlint If you haven't yet installed the cabal command, instructions are here: http://ghcmutterings.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/bootstrapping-cabal-install/ As an example of what HLint does, running "hlint darcs-2.1.2" over the latest stable release of darcs gives 385 suggestions, including: darcs-2.1.2\src\CommandLine.lhs:46:1: Use a string literal Found: [' ', '\t', '"', '%'] Why not: " \t\"%" darcs-2.1.2\src\CommandLine.lhs:49:1: Eta reduce Found: quotedArg ftable = between (char '"') (char '"') $ quoteContent ftable Why not: quotedArg = between (char '"') (char '"') . quoteContent darcs-2.1.2\src\CommandLine.lhs:94:1: Use concatMap Found: concat $ map escapeC s Why not: concatMap escapeC s To see all the hints in a nice interactive document visit http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/hlint/hlint-report.htm (recommended if you are thinking of trying out hlint) All necessary links, including a manual, hackage links, bug tracker and source code can be found from the tool website: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/hlint/ Acknowledgements: Niklas Broberg and the haskell-src-exts package have both been very helpful. The darcs users mailing list gave many good suggestions which I've incorportated. Please direct any follow up conversations to haskell-cafe@ Thanks Neil * Why GHC 6.10? View patterns.

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Missing Documentation
by Ronald Legere 16 Dec '08

16 Dec '08

This may very well be a FAQ, but I tried to search the archives and could not find a post... Anyway, some documentation seems to be missing, which was there before I thought. For example: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/haskell98/Random.html Thanks, and sorry if this lowers the S/N Ron

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ICFP09 Call for Papers
by Matthew Fluet (ICFP Publicity Chair) 15 Dec '08

15 Dec '08

Call for Papers ICFP 2009: International Conference on Functional Programming Edinburgh, Scotland, 31 August - 2 September 2009 http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/icfp09.html ** Submission deadline: 2 March 2009 ** (submission deadline is earlier than usual) ICFP 2009 seeks original papers on the art and science of functional programming. Submissions are invited on all topics from principles to practice, from foundations to features, from abstraction to application. The scope includes all languages that encourage functional programming, including both purely applicative and imperative languages, as well as languages with objects or concurrency. Particular topics of interest include * Language Design: type systems; concurrency and distribution; modules; components and composition; metaprogramming; relations to object-oriented or logic programming; interoperability * Implementation: abstract machines; compilation; compile-time and run-time optimization; memory management; multi-threading; exploiting parallel hardware; interfaces to foreign functions, services, components or low-level machine resources * Software-Development Techniques: algorithms and data structures; design patterns; specification; verification; validation; proof assistants; debugging; testing; tracing; profiling * Foundations: formal semantics; lambda calculus; rewriting; type theory; monads; continuations; control; state; effects * Transformation and Analysis: abstract interpretation; partial evaluation; program transformation; program calculation; program proof * Applications and Domain-Specific Languages: symbolic computing; formal-methods tools; artificial intelligence; systems programming; distributed-systems and web programming; hardware design; databases; XML processing; scientific and numerical computing; graphical user interfaces; multimedia programming; scripting; system administration; security; education * Functional Pearls: elegant, instructive, and fun essays on functional programming The conference also solicits Experience Reports, which are short papers that provide evidence that functional programming really works or describe obstacles that have kept it from working in a particular application. What's different this year? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * The conference dates and the submission deadline are about one month earlier than usual. * Special 'Call for Experience Reports' page, suitable as a target for posts on blogs and social networks to reach practitioners who wouldn't normally think about submitting to a conference. If you have a blog, etc., please help by pointing your readers to: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~apt/icfp09_cfer.html Instructions for authors ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By Monday, 2 March 2009, 20:00 UTC, submit an abstract of at most 300 words and a full paper of at most 12 pages (4 pages for an Experience Report), including bibliography and figures. The deadline will be strictly enforced and papers exceeding the page limits will be summarily rejected. Authors have the option to attach supplementary material to a submission, on the understanding that reviewers may choose not to look at it. A submission will be evaluated according to its relevance, correctness, significance, originality, and clarity. It should explain its contributions in both general and technical terms, clearly identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is significant, and comparing it with previous work. The technical content should be accessible to a broad audience. Functional Pearls and Experience Reports are separate categories of papers that need not report original research results and must be marked as such at the time of submission. Detailed guidelines on both categories are below. Each submission must adhere to SIGPLAN's republication policy, as explained on the web. Violation risks summary rejection of the offending submission. Proceedings will be published by ACM Press. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to transfer the copyright to ACM. Presentations will be videotaped and released online if the presenter consents by signing an additional permission form at the time of the presentation. Released videos will be included along with the conference proceedings in the ACM Digital Library and may also be placed on a host such as YouTube or Google Video. Formatting: ~~~~~~~~~~~ Submissions must be in PDF format printable in black and white on US Letter sized paper and interpretable by Ghostscript. If this requirement is a hardship, make contact with the program chair at least one week before the deadline. ICFP proceedings are printed in black and white. It is permissible to include color in a submission, but you risk annoying reviewers who will have to decide if your final paper will be understandable without it. Papers must adhere to the standard ACM conference format: two columns, nine-point font on a ten-point baseline, with columns 20pc (3.33in) wide and 54pc (9in) tall, with a column gutter of 2pc (0.33in). A suitable document template for LaTeX is available from SIGPLAN. Submission: ~~~~~~~~~~~ Submissions will be accepted electronically at a URL to be named later. The deadline is set in Coordinated Universal Time. The world clock (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=3&day=2&year=200…) can give you the equivalent in your local time, e.g., Noon Monday in Seattle, 3:00 PM Monday in New York, 8:00 PM Monday in London, 5:00 AM Tuesday in Tokyo. Citation: ~~~~~~~~~ We recommend (but do not require) that you put your citations into author-date form. This procedure makes your paper easier to review. For example, if you cite a result on testing as ``(Claessen and Hughes 2000)'', many reviewers will recognize the result instantly. On the other hand, if you cite it as ``[4]'', even the best-informed reviewer has to page through your paper to find the reference. By using author-date form, you enable a knowledgeable reviewer to focus on content, not arbitrary numbering of references. LaTeX users can simply use the natbib package along with the plainnat bibliography style. In practice, this means putting \usepackage{natbib} \bibpunct();A{}, \let\cite=\citep in your LaTeX preamble, and \bibliographystyle{plainnat} in your document. For most citations you will use the \cite command; if you want a citation like ``Claessen and Hughes (2000) showed that...'' you should use something like ``\citet{claessen:quickcheck} showed...'' Alternatively, the McBride bibliography style, which adheres to the Chicago manual of style ``Documentation Two'' specifications and which fixes some perceived deficiencies of natbib, may be used. The style file along with instructions for using it is available on the McBride web site. Author response: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Authors will have a 48-hour period, starting at 20:00 UTC on 21 April 2009, to read and respond to reviews. Special categories of papers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In addition to research papers, ICFP solicits two kinds of papers that do not require original research contributions: Functional Pearls, which are full papers, and Experience Reports, which are limited to four pages. Authors submitting such papers may wish to consider the following advice. Functional Pearls ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Functional Pearl is an elegant essay about something related to functional programming. It might offer: * a new and thought-provoking way of looking at an old idea * an instructive example of program calculation or proof * a nifty presentation of an old or new data structure * an interesting application of functional programming techniques * a novel use or exposition of functional programming in the classroom Functional Pearls are not restricted to the above varieties, however. While pearls often demonstrate an idea through the development of a short program, there is no requirement or expectation that they do so. Thus, they encompass the notions of theoretical and educational pearls. Functional Pearls are valued as highly and judged as rigorously as ordinary papers, but using somewhat different criteria. In particular, a pearl is not required to report original research. However, it should be concise, instructive, and entertaining. Your pearl is likely to be rejected if your readers get bored, if the material gets too complicated, if too much specialized knowledge is needed, or if the writing is inelegant. The key to writing a good pearl is polishing. A submission you wish to have treated as a pearl must be marked as such on the submission web page, and should contain the words ``Functional Pearl'' somewhere in its title or subtitle. These steps will alert reviewers to use the appropriate evaluation criteria. However, pearls will be combined with ordinary papers for the purpose of computing the conference's acceptance rate. Experience Reports ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The purpose of an Experience Report is to help create a body of published, refereed, citable evidence that functional programming really works---or to describe what obstacles prevent it from working. Possible topics for an Experience Report include, but are not limited to: * insights gained from real-world projects using functional programming * comparison of functional programming with conventional programming in the context of an industrial project or a university curriculum * project-management, business, or legal issues encountered when using functional programming in a real-world project * curricular issues encountered when using functional programming in education * real-world constraints that created special challenges for an implementation of a functional language or for functional programming in general An Experience Report is distinguished from a normal ICFP paper by its title, by its length, and by the criteria used to evaluate it. * Both in the proceedings and in any citations, the title of each accepted Experience Report must begin with the words ``Experience Report'' followed by a colon. The acceptance rate for Experience Reports will be computed and reported separately from the rate for ordinary papers. * An Experience Report is at most 4 pages long. Each accepted Experience Report will be presented at the conference, but depending on the number of Experience Reports and regular papers accepted, authors of Experience reports may be asked to give shorter talks. * Because the purpose of Experience Reports is to enable our community to accumulate a body of evidence about the efficacy of functional programming, an acceptable Experience Report need not add to the body of knowledge of the functional-programming community by presenting novel results or conclusions. It is sufficient if the Report states a clear thesis and provides supporting evidence. The thesis must be relevant to ICFP, but it need not be novel. The program committee will accept or reject Experience Reports based on whether they judge the evidence to be convincing. Anecdotal evidence will be acceptable provided it is well argued and the author explains what efforts were made to gather as much evidence as possible. Typically, more convincing evidence is obtained from papers which show how functional programming was used than from papers which only say that functional programming was used. The most convincing evidence often includes comparisons of situations before and after the introduction or discontinuation of functional programming. Evidence drawn from a single person's experience may be sufficient, but more weight will be given to evidence drawn from the experience of groups of people. An Experience Report should be short and to the point: make a claim about how well functional programming worked on your project and why, and produce evidence to substantiate your claim. If functional programming worked for you in the same ways it has worked for others, you need only to summarize the results---the main part of your paper should discuss how well it worked and in what context. Most readers will not want to know all the details of your project and its implementation, but please characterize your project and its context well enough so that readers can judge to what degree your experience is relevant to their own projects. Be especially careful to highlight any unusual aspects of your project. Also keep in mind that specifics about your project are more valuable than generalities about functional programming; for example, it is more valuable to say that your team delivered its software a month ahead of schedule than it is to say that functional programming made your team more productive. If your paper not only describes experience but also presents new technical results, or if your experience refutes cherished beliefs of the functional-programming community, you may be better off submitting it as a full paper, which will be judged by the usual criteria of novelty, originality, and relevance. If you are unsure in which category to submit, the program chair will be happy to help you decide. Other information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Conference Chair ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Graham Hutton (University of Nottingham) Program Chair ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Andrew Tolmach Department of Computer Science Portland State University P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207 USA Email: apt(a)cs.pdx.edu Phone: +1 503 725 5492 Fax: +1 503 725 3211 Mail sent to the address above is filtered for spam. If you send mail and do not receive a prompt response, particularly if the deadline is looming, feel free to telephone. Program Committee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amal Ahmed (Toyota Technological Institute, Chicago) Maria Alpuente (Technical University of Valencia (UPV)) Lennart Augustsson (Standard Chartered Bank) Lars Birkedal (IT University of Copenhagen) Manuel Chakravarty (University of New South Wales) Koen Claessen (Chalmers University of Technology) Marc Feeley (Universite de Montreal) Andrzej Filinski (University of Copenhagen) Daan Leijen (Microsoft Research) Xavier Leroy (INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt) Conor McBride (University of Strathclyde) Matthew Might (University of Utah) Shin-Cheng Mu (Academia Sinica) Atsushi Ohori (Tohoku University) Kristoffer Rose (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center) Important Dates (at 20:00 UTC) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Submission: 2 March 2009 Author response: 21-23 April 2009 Notification: 5 May 2009 Final papers due: 8 June 2009 ICFP 2009 Web Site ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/icfp09.html Special Journal Issue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There will be a special issue of the Journal of Functional Programming with papers from ICFP 2009. The program committee will invite the authors of select accepted papers to submit a journal version to this issue.

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