The Functional Programming Group at the University of Glasgow was started in 1986 by John Hughes and Mary Sheeran. Since then it has grown in size and strength, becoming one of the largest computing science research groups at Glasgow and earning an international reputation. The first Glasgow Functional Programming Workshop was organised in the summer of 1988. Its purpose was threefold: to provide a snapshot of all the research going on within the group, to share research ideas between Glaswegians and colleagues in the U.K. and abroad, and to introduce research students to the art of writing...

This is the proceedings of the seventh annual workshop held by the Glasgow Functional Programming Group. The purpose of the workshop is to provide a focus for new research, to foster research contacts with other functional language researchers, and to provide a platform for research students to develop their presentation skills. As in previous years, we spent three days closeted together in a pleasant seaside town, isolated from normal work commitments. We were joined by colleagues from other universities (both UK and abroad) and from industry. Workshop participants presented a short talk...

Programming is hard. Building a large program is like constructing a steam locomotive through a hole the size of a postage stamp. An artefact that is the fruit of hundreds of person-years is only ever seen by anyone through a lOO-line window. In some ways it is astonishing that such large systems work at all. But parallel programming is much, much harder. There are so many more things to go wrong. Debugging is a nightmare. A bug that shows up on one run may never happen when you are looking for it - but unfailingly returns as soon as your attention moves elsewhere. A large fraction of the...