REALISATION OF SECD MACHINE

Abstract

Functional languages identify a component of the next generation of computers and aim for achieving high speed of execution by efficiently exploiting huge armies of cheaply available single-chip microprocessors. There are many architectures for the implementation of functional languages. To implement the functional languages on present day computer SECD machine is one of the implementation being used. The SECD machine was proposed by Peter Landin as an operational semantics for the lambda calculus. This machine implements functional programming languages in a purely mechanical way. The SECD machine uses four stacks in its operation which are called the stack, the environment, the control and the dump. At any time, the state of the machine is characterized by the values appearing on each of these stacks. The program execution consists of manipulating these stacks and the result of execution is placed at the top of the stack. This thesis reports the design and implementation of SECD machine. The package is implemented in TURBOC on a PC-AT compatible, which can take the machine language of SECD machine as input and deliver the output.