Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming

This is the official web-site for the annual Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP), formerly known as the Scottish Functional Programming Workshop (SFP). TFP is dedicated to promoting new research directions related to the field of functional programming and to investigate the relationships of functional programming with other branches of computer science. It is designed to be a platform for novel and upcoming research, combined with a post-event refereeing process and a formal publication of selected papers as a book. In particular we encourage young researchers to present their work at TFP. In recognition of the extra effort spent in giving polished presentations the programme committee of TFP each year gives out a Best Student Paper award. To learn more about structure, history and directions of the series, see the on-line constitution of TFP, or check out the sections below. In particular, information on individual workshops/symposia can be found here. A review of volumes 1 and 2 of the TFP proceedings can be found in the 2003 issue of the JFP 13(4):823-824. More information on the TFP proceedings, published as books by Intellect, is also available.

Future Symposia

The Tenth Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming will be held in Komarno, Slovakia, June 2-4 2009, organised by Eotvos Lorand University of Sciences (ELTE), Budapest. It will be co-located with the 3rd Central European Functional Programming School.

The Eleventh Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming will be held in Oklahoma City, USA, May 2010, organised by the University of Oklahoma.

History of TFP

Central Scotland has been very influential in the development of functional programming, with notable contributions including the design, development and implementation of SASL, Standard ML and Haskell. At present there are internationally recognised research groups at the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University and the University of St Andrews, investigating a variety of theoretical and practical aspects of functional programming. The Scottish Functional Programming Workshops draw on the strengths of these and other Scottish centres, and are the worthy successor to the highly-successful series of Glasgow Functional Programming Workshops which ran from 1988 to 1998 (Bibtex entries for almost all GlaFP papers).

Scope of the Symposia

The scope of the TFP symposia covers all aspects of functional programming, including but not limited to theory, applications, architectures and implementations, parallel programming and types. TFP is intended to be a venue for publication of papers both describing new research results and identifying new or long-term trends.

Why "Symposium" rather than "Workshop"?

TFP falls somwhere between a workshop and a conference: attendance is open, talk abstracts (but not usually draft papers) are vetted, final papers (submitted after the symposium) are refereed and a selection of publishable papers chosen. However papers are not expected to be as complete or polished as for a conference publication. We feel the "symposium" title describes this middle ground of formality, and reflects our intention to publish a high-quality body of new and leading-edge research.

TFP Steering Committee

The TFP steering committee deals with the long term planning of the series and provides help for each year's programme and local chairs in organising the symposium.

Information for Authors

When preparing a paper for submission to a TFP symposium, please check the website for any style guides and page limits. For the camera-ready versions of TFP papers we use the TFP Latex style. Authors are encouraged to use this style file for the draft proceedings too. More resources for authors of TFP papers, including Bibtex files for all Glasgow FP and SFP/TFP papers, can be found on a separate web page.

Previous TFP Symposia

Lists of all papers in past GlaFP/SFP/TFP Symposia are available here:

Here is a list of links to previous SFP/TFP Symposia and Workshops:

1st Scottish Functional Programming Workshop
University of Stirling, Bridge of Allan, Scotland
August 29th to September 1st, 1999.
Table of Contents, Bibtex entries for the papers in the proceedings.
2nd Scottish Functional Programming Workshop
University of St Andrews, Scotland,
July 26th to 28th, 2000.
Table of Contents.
3rd Scottish Functional Programming Workshop,
University of Stirling, Bridge of Allan, Scotland
August 22nd to 24th, 2001
Table of Contents, Bibtex entries for the papers in the proceedings.
TFP'03 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming,
Edinburgh, Scotland
September 11th to 12th, 2003
Table of contents, Bibtex.
TFP'04 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming,
Munich, Germany
November 25-26, 2004
Table of contents, Bibtex
TFP'05 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming,
Tallinn, Estonia,
September 23-24, 2005
TFP'06 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming
Nottingham, England,
April 19-21, 2006.
Table of contents, Bibtex.
TFP'07 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming
New York City, USA,
April 2-4, 2007.
Table of contents, Bibtex.
TFP'08 Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming
Nijmegen, The Netherlands,
May 26-28, 2008.

Other Functional Programming Events

This is an incomplete list. In addition to the events listed below, there are also occasional Latin American conferences on functional programming, workshops on languges including Haskell and SML. Functional programming papers are also published at venues including the European Symposium on Programming (ESOP), the ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), the ACM Conference on Programming Languages and Implementation (PLDI). Please contact us if your event is not listed here and you would like it to be added.

International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP)
The primary conference for researchers in functional programming, a successor to the conferences on Lisp and Functional Programming and on Functional Programming and Computer Architecture, alternating between Europe and the US, and with a number of attached workshops. Please follow this link to the ICFP home.
International Workshop on Implementations of Functional Languages (IFL)
This independent workshop covers a wider ground than its title suggests, being also concerned with applications and some theory. It is geographically located in Europe with an international audience, and publishes in the Springer Verlag LNCS series. Please follow this link to the IFL home.