delta

The delta language is a functional programming language that compiles to stream-processing automata. For a full introduction to the core calculus that delta is based on, see Stream Types.

delta has a number of features that set it apart from existing stream-processing languages:

1. delta is not combinator-based. Unlike many stream processing languages, which provides a limited set of combinators like map, filter, and fold, delta programs are written as standard functional list programs. All of the afformentioned standard streaming combinators can be written in delta, but programmers are not required to fit their programs into a composition of ad-hoc recursion schemes. This is enabled by a novel ordered type system, which statically rejects list programs that cannot be run a stream programs.

2. delta has rich ``stream types'', which allow programmers to express and rely on complex temporal patterns in their streams.

3. delta is deterministic by default: all well-typed programs are guaranteed to run deterministically, even in the presence of parallel input streams.

A simple delta program is the running sum function, which takes a stream of integers (written Int*), and produces the stream that is a running sum of the input.

fun go(n : Int; xs : Int*) : Int* = 
    case xs of
      nil => n :: nil
    | y::ys => wait y do
                 let k = {n + y} in
                 {n + y} :: go({n + y};ys)
               end

fun runningSum(xs : Int*) : Int* =
     go(0;xs)

While this looks like a mostly normal functional program (albiet annotated with some extra nonsense), it runs like a stateful stream processing function: accepting and producing one element of the input at a time, and updating an internal state. We can demonstrate this by first running it for one step: sending in a 2, produces the running total.

>> exec step addOneToAll(xs = [2;emp))
[2;emp)

And then running it for another step: sending in a 4 produces 6, the result of 6 + 2

>> exec step addOneToAll(xs =[4;emp))
[6;emp)

Statically Checking Streamability

Of course, there are a lot of match/nil/cons list programs which are not (naturally) streaming programs. For example, one could imagine attempting to write the reverse program as follows:

fun snoc(x : Int; xs : Int*) : Int* =
     case xs of
       nil => [x]
     | y::ys => y :: snoc(x;ys)

fun rev(xs : Int*) : Int* =
     case xs of
       nil => nil
     | y::ys => snoc(y;ys)

The function snoc is rejected by delta with the error message "Variable y used before x, but expected the other order". (Actually, the error message doesn't say this, it says something much less readable and even less understandable. This is still a prototype, the error messages are terrible.) This is because the order of arguments to a delta function matters. The order of arguments describes the order of arrival: snoc is a function that expects first a single Int, bound to x, and then some more Ints, which get bound to xs. When we pattern match on xs and get a head y and tails ys, these also have an order. The second branch of the case expects to first get x, and then y, and then ys. The error arises when we use y first, out of order.

This requirement, that we use variables in the order they're listed, ensures that we can implement the program as a streaming program. If the first-to-arrive variable is used first, we can take the first piece of input, use it to produce an initial prefix of output, and then continue once the next piece of input arrives.

Types

Values in delta are data streams, and so the types in delta are stream types. Stream types are similar to regular expressions in that they describe the structure of a sequence of data.

The most important type in delta is the star type of repeated values. This type is written like s*, where s is another stream type. For example, type Int* is the type of streams of ints, one int after another. A value of type Int* is a finite, but potentially unbounded, stream of values of type Int. Programming with star streams is a lot like programming with lists. Terms of type s* come in two forms: they are either nil, the empty stream of ss, or e :: e', where e has type s, and e' has type s*.

Syntax

Todo

Compiler Structure

Todo

Papers

Acknowledgements

The delta language is actively being developed by Joseph Cutler. delta is based on the Stream Types Calculus, created by Joseph Cutler, Christopher Watson, Phillip Hilliard, Harrison Goldstein, Caleb Stanford, and Benjamin C. Pierce. The typechecking algorithm in delta was developed by Emeka Nkurumeh.