Safe Reactive Programming

FunLoft is a concurrent programming language, designed with the following objectives: 1) make concurrent programming simpler than programming with standard preemption-based techniques, by providing a framework with a clear and sound semantics; 2) provide a safe language, in which, for example, data-races are impossible by construction; 3) control the use of resources (CPU and memory); for example, memory leaks cannot occur in FunLoft programs, which always react in finite time; 4) offer an efficient implementation, in order to be able to deal with large numbers of concurrent components. Moreover, FunLoft programs can exploit multicore architectures, which is another way to increase program efficiency. The book describes the FunLoft language in detail and its use in several contexts: cellular automata, processing of colliding particles, simulation of preys and predators, and dataflow programming.

Autorentext

Frédéric Boussinot is a senior researcher in Computer Science at INRIA. He is a specialist in programming language design. He advocates the use of formal semantics and techniques for language design. He promotes the reactive programming approach, which gives a clear and well-founded alternative to standard preemption- based concurrency.