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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Concurrent System Programming with Effect Handlers

Authors : Stephen Dolan, Spiros Eliopoulos, Daniel Hillerström, Anil Madhavapeddy, K. C. Sivaramakrishnan, Leo White

Published in: Trends in Functional Programming

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Algebraic effects and their handlers have been steadily gaining attention as a programming language feature for composably expressing user-defined computational effects. While several prototype implementations of languages incorporating algebraic effects exist, Multicore OCaml incorporates effect handlers as the primary means of expressing concurrency in the language. In this paper, we make the observation that effect handlers can elegantly express particularly difficult programs that combine system programming and concurrency without compromising performance. Our experimental results on a highly concurrent and scalable web server demonstrate that effect handlers perform on par with highly optimised monadic concurrency libraries, while retaining the simplicity of direct-style code.

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previous chapter Elmsvuur: A Multi-tier Version of Elm and its Time-Traveling Debugger

next chapter Automatically Introducing Tail Recursion in CakeML

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Title: Concurrent System Programming with Effect Handlers
Authors: Stephen Dolan
Spiros Eliopoulos
Daniel Hillerström
Anil Madhavapeddy
K. C. Sivaramakrishnan
Leo White
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Trends in Functional Programming
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89718-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-89719-6

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89719-6_6

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