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Abstract : |
Advanced programming languages such as Standard ML have rarely been used for systems programming tasks such as operating systems and network communications. In order to understand more fully the requirements of systems programming, we have implemented a suite of industry-standard network communication protocols in a completely type-safe extension of Standard ML. While the implementation has only recently become operational, we already observe acceptable communications throughput. We make careful use of the Standard ML modules system, with the core component of the implementation being a signature which is generic to all communications protocols. This generic protocol is then specialized for specific protocols, and these are implemented by functors parameterized by generic protocols. This leads, |