Debugging standard ML without reverse engineering

Andrew P. Tolmach; Andrew W. Appel

doi:10.1145/91556.91564

Debugging standard ML without reverse engineering

Andrew P. Tolmach, Andrew W. Appel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

40 Scopus citations

Abstract

We have built a novel and efficient replay debugger for our Standard ML compiler. Debugging facilities are provided by instrumenting the user's source code; this approach, made feasible by ML's safety property, is machine-independent and back-end independent. Replay is practical because ML is normally used functionally, and our compiler uses continuation-passing style; thus most of the program's state can be checkpointed quickly and compactly using call-with-current-continuation. Together, instrumentation and replay support a simple and elegant debugger featuring full variable display, polymorphic type resolution, stack trace-back, breakpointing, and reverse execution, even though our compiler is very highly optimizing and has no run-time stack.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program
Publisher	Publ by ACM
Pages	1-12
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Print)	089791368X, 9780897913683
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/91556.91564
State	Published - 1990
Event	Proceedings of the 1990 ACM Conference on LISP and Functional Programming - Nice, Fr Duration: Jun 27 1990 → Jun 29 1990

Publication series

Name	Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program

Other

Other	Proceedings of the 1990 ACM Conference on LISP and Functional Programming
City	Nice, Fr
Period	6/27/90 → 6/29/90

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Engineering(all)
Software
Modeling and Simulation
Computational Theory and Mathematics
Computational Mathematics

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10.1145/91556.91564

Cite this

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title = "Debugging standard ML without reverse engineering",

abstract = "We have built a novel and efficient replay debugger for our Standard ML compiler. Debugging facilities are provided by instrumenting the user's source code; this approach, made feasible by ML's safety property, is machine-independent and back-end independent. Replay is practical because ML is normally used functionally, and our compiler uses continuation-passing style; thus most of the program's state can be checkpointed quickly and compactly using call-with-current-continuation. Together, instrumentation and replay support a simple and elegant debugger featuring full variable display, polymorphic type resolution, stack trace-back, breakpointing, and reverse execution, even though our compiler is very highly optimizing and has no run-time stack.",

author = "Tolmach, {Andrew P.} and Appel, {Andrew W.}",

year = "1990",

doi = "10.1145/91556.91564",

language = "English (US)",

isbn = "089791368X",

series = "Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program",

publisher = "Publ by ACM",

pages = "1--12",

booktitle = "Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program",

note = "Proceedings of the 1990 ACM Conference on LISP and Functional Programming ; Conference date: 27-06-1990 Through 29-06-1990",

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T1 - Debugging standard ML without reverse engineering

AU - Tolmach, Andrew P.

AU - Appel, Andrew W.

PY - 1990

Y1 - 1990

N2 - We have built a novel and efficient replay debugger for our Standard ML compiler. Debugging facilities are provided by instrumenting the user's source code; this approach, made feasible by ML's safety property, is machine-independent and back-end independent. Replay is practical because ML is normally used functionally, and our compiler uses continuation-passing style; thus most of the program's state can be checkpointed quickly and compactly using call-with-current-continuation. Together, instrumentation and replay support a simple and elegant debugger featuring full variable display, polymorphic type resolution, stack trace-back, breakpointing, and reverse execution, even though our compiler is very highly optimizing and has no run-time stack.

AB - We have built a novel and efficient replay debugger for our Standard ML compiler. Debugging facilities are provided by instrumenting the user's source code; this approach, made feasible by ML's safety property, is machine-independent and back-end independent. Replay is practical because ML is normally used functionally, and our compiler uses continuation-passing style; thus most of the program's state can be checkpointed quickly and compactly using call-with-current-continuation. Together, instrumentation and replay support a simple and elegant debugger featuring full variable display, polymorphic type resolution, stack trace-back, breakpointing, and reverse execution, even though our compiler is very highly optimizing and has no run-time stack.

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DO - 10.1145/91556.91564

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:0025561421

SN - 089791368X

SN - 9780897913683

T3 - Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program

SP - 1

EP - 12

BT - Proc 1990 ACM Conf LISP Funct Program

PB - Publ by ACM

T2 - Proceedings of the 1990 ACM Conference on LISP and Functional Programming

Y2 - 27 June 1990 through 29 June 1990

ER -

Debugging standard ML without reverse engineering

Abstract

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All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

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