Abstract Machine Support for Purely Functional Operating Systems

Abstract

This document is one of a pair reporting the results of the Functional Operating Systems project commenced at Oxford in February 1982.

 The report is divided into two parts: The development of an abstract machine to support a purely functional systems programming language (this document) and the exploration of a spectrum of functional, distributed operating systems (to appear later).

 The tow aspects of the work progressed together driving and supporting each other. So a certain amount of the narrative text is common to both reports (in particular the introduction), and the reports may be read independently, nevertheless, the reports must be take together to provide a full record of the project, as the technical details are complementary.

 I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Distributed Computing Systems Panel of the Science and Engineering Research Council.   

 Thanks are due to Peter Henderson and Geraint Jones for valuable ideas and feedback during the project.