Compiling Data Flow Diagrams into Functional Programs

We suggest a method for compiling an arbitrary visual language V data flow diagrams with loops into a parallel functional language Sisal functions based on token propagation over the diagram and loop collapsing into a system of (mutually) recursive functions. This compilation algorithm preserves a concurrence potentially present in the data flow graph. 1 Introduction The V visual data flow language [1] is an experiment with a visual representation of dependencies between data and processes and demonstrates how iterative control constructs could be visualized and adapted into a data-flow paradigm. The motivation behinds this is to achieve a clear and straightforward correspondence between the program source code (the data flow diagram in this case) and the order of program execution. In many cases an iterative algorithm description is preferable to recursive descriptions. The V language allows combinations of iteration and recursion. Data flow languages are closely related to function..