"Steinitz, Dominic J" wrote:

I'd love it if someone could write a tutorial paper on space leaks.

I agree that would be very useful.

Even with the explanations that have been provided, I find it difficult to understand why expressions get evaluated in a particular order and why garbage collections happen at a given point.

In my "traces" I did the garbage collections as soon as possible, basically removing unused let bindings. The ordering of evaluations is a bit more tricky ... I would recommend becoming familiar with the various call-by-need calculi. For me, it was more intuitive than trying to understand what's going on at some lower level (such as the STG Machine) and then relate that lower level to my program. With call-by-need calculi you can understand what's going on at the source level. Here's a starting point: The Call-by-Need Lambda Calculus, POPL 95, Ariola, Felleisen, Maraist, Odersky, & Wadler @article{maraist-odersky-wadler:need-JFP98, author = "John Maraist and Martin Odersky and Philip Wadler", title = "The Call-by-Need Lambda Calculus", journal = "Journal of Functional Programming", volume = 8, number = 3, month = may, year = 1998, publisher = "Cambridge University Press", } - Mark