WCTP2026 Talk

Behavioral Changes Over Time and Synchronization in FRP

Sosuke Moriguchi & Takuo Watanabe
15th Workshop on Computation: Theory and Practice (WCTP 2026), Lipa City, Batangas, Philippines, Nov. 25-27, 2026.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a functional reactive programming language that explicitly handles time and state transitions, along with its implementation. In functional reactive programming languages, time is often treated abstractly, and synchronous processing is implemented with respect to this time. As an alternative approach, using time-varying values that represent real time allows for processing linked to actual time; however, because these values are ordinary time-varying values, time-specific analysis is difficult, and there is insufficient flexibility to control the recalculation of the time-varying values themselves. There are a few languages that link directly to actual time, but either they offer little flexibility in describing time periods, or they are too flexible, making implementation difficult. The mechanism proposed in this paper strikes a balance between flexibility and implementability by allowing each module to switch between sets of time-varying values and their update rules.