Coventry,

FLIC is a Functional Language Intermediate Code, intended to provide a common intermediate language between diverse implementations of functional languages, includ-ing parallel ones. This paper gives a formal definition of FLIC’s syntax and semantics, in the hope that its existence may encourage greater exchange of programs and benchmarks between research groups. 1. The Aims of FLIC It is a common observation that high level functional languages are all "sugared " version of the lambda cal-culus, which suggests that it should be possible to define a common intermediate code into which they could all compile. Widespread use of such an intermediate language would (i) help alleviate the bad effects of a proliferation of high level languages, without unduly constraining their different strengths; (ii) give wider access to fast implementations; (iii) make benchmark programs available to a wider community; (iv) provide a language in which some compiler passes can be regarded as source to source transforma-tions (e.g. lambda lifting, strictness analysis). There appears to be widespread support for, and interest in, the development of such an intermediate code. This paper is an attempt to define an intermediate code, called FLIC, in a form acceptable to as many potential users as possible. It has been substantially improved upon during discussions held on the FP elec-tronic mailing list. In the end, however, it represents a personal view, driven by the requirement to establish a standard for use in the GRIP project [5]