The Scenic Route to Deforestation

Explore a conference talk from the 27th International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages that examines the application of shortcut deforestation optimization to Curry compilers. Follow Steven Libby and Vincent Robinson as they investigate parametricity and free theorems as tools for proving optimization correctness in functional logic programming. Discover the surprising aspects that emerge when applying parametricity theorems to Curry, a functional logic language. The presentation includes a proof of correctness for the shortcut deforestation optimization and explores the broader implications for the field. This 28-minute talk was presented at POPL25, sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN in January 2025.