With the increasing capacities of todays computers, high order programming has gradually gained ground, not only in academic research but also in industrial applications as a specification and prototyping tool. On the other hand, the interest in functional programming has created new fields of academic research. Although this research is directly motivated by problems arising when implementing functional languages or designing functional programmes, its actual relation to "everyday programming" is often overlooked. The main aim of this book is to bring together theory and practice and to illustrate both the gains and the difficulties that a programmer may face. The book assumes that the reader has some programming practice, in particular with functional programming. Evolved from lecture notes for students, it also includes exercises.
Part 1 Advanced applicative programming: applicative versus imperative programming; the art of applicative programming; proving properties of recursive functions; high order functions; data types. Part 2 Polymorphism and modulariation: polymorphism; recursors for data types; Standard ML structures; parametric structures - functors. Part 3 Implementation issues: type inference; interpretation; compilation.