Proceedings of the 2007 workshop on Workshop on ML

Abstract

We are pleased to welcome you to the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML. The ML family of programming languages, whose most popular dialects are Standard ML and Objective Caml, has inspired a tremendous amount of computer science research, both practical and theoretical. ML continues to be employed successfully in applications ranging from compilers and theorem provers to low-level systems software, web applications and video games. The Workshop on ML aims to bring together researchers, developers and users of ML to hear about and discuss the latest work on the design, semantics, implementation and application of ML and ML-like languages. This year, we sought submissions of two varieties: research papers and status reports (which we originally called work-in-progress reports). Research papers describe novel research that has not been published elsewhere, and we judged them according to the standards of past ML workshops. Status reports were judged to a lower standard of novelty and execution. We introduced the status report category in order to provide authors with a venue for informing others in the ML community about the status of ML-related research or implementation projects, as well as communicating insights gained from such projects, without having to write a full research paper. The call for papers attracted 16 submissions: 8 research papers and 8 status reports. Each submission was reviewed by three international referees. During a five-day electronic meeting, the program committee selected 9 submissions for presentation at the workshop: 4 research papers, 4 status reports, and one paper that was submitted in the category of research paper but that the committee elected to accept as a status report. We are also fortunate to have an invited talk from Didier Rémy, senior researcher at INRIA Rocquencourt, about his recent work on the type system of MLF , which is designed to bridge the expressiveness gap between ML and System F. An abstract of his talk is included in the proceedings. The workshop will conclude with a session called 5-Minute Madness, in which members of the audience are encouraged to give brief impromptu presentations of ideas or work-in-progress concerning a particular topic. The topic this year will be Design Ideas for Next-Generation ML. We hope that this session will generate lively discussion, as it has in its previous incarnations at other recent workshops. However, as it is a deliberately informal session, there is no record of it included in the proceedings.