Work

Effect Handlers for C via Coroutines

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Effect handlers provide a structured means for implementing user-defined, composable, and customisable computational effects, ranging from exceptions to generators to lightweight threads. We introduce libseff , a novel effect handlers library for C, based on coroutines. Whereas prior effect handler libraries for C are intended primarily as compilation targets, libseff is intended to be used directly from C programs. As such, the design of libseff parts ways from traditional effect handler implementations, both by using mutable coroutines as the main representation of pending computations, and by avoiding closures as handlers by way of reified effects. We show that the performance of libseff is competitive across a range of platforms and benchmarks.

Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

DOI: 10.1145/3689798

Authors: Mario Alvarez-Picallo, Teodoro Freund, Dan R. Ghica, Sam Lindley

Institutions: University of Birmingham, University of Edinburgh

Language: English

Topic: Logic, programming, and type systems

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: UK Research and Innovation

Award: G3189292693