Heap recycling for lazy languages

Pure functional programming languages preclude destructive updates of heap-allocated data. In such languages, all newly computed algebraic values claim freshly allocated heap space, which typically causes idiomatic programs to be notoriously inefficient when compared to their imperative and impure counterparts. We partly overcome this shortcoming by considering a syntactically light language construct for enabling user-controlled in-place updates of algebraic values. The resulting calculus, that is based on a combination of type-based uniqueness and constructor analysis, is guaranteed to maintain referential transparency and is fully compatible with existing run-time systems for nonstrict, pure functional languages.

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