We adopt the untyped imperative object calculus of Abadi and Cardelli as a minimal setting in which to study problems of compilation and program equivalence that arise when compiling objectoriented languages. We present both a big-step and a small-step substitution-based operational semantics for the calculus. Our rst two results are theorems asserting the equivalence of our substitutionbased semantics with a closure-based semantics like that given by Abadi and Cardelli. Our third result is a direct proof of the correctness of compilation to a stack-based abstract machine via a small-step decompilation algorithm. Our fourth result is that contextual equivalence of objects coincides with a form of Mason and Talcott's CIU equivalence; the latter provides a tractable means of establishing operational equivalences. Finally, we prove correct an algorithm, used in our prototype compiler, for statically resolving method osets. This is the rst study of correctness of an object-oriented abstract machine, and of operational equivalence for the imperative object calculus.

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Abstract. Landin’s SECD machine was the first abstract machine for applicative expressions, i.e., functional programs. Landin’s J operator was the first control operator for functional languages, and was specified by an extension of the SECD machine. We present a family of evaluation functions corresponding to this extension of the SECD machine, using a series of elementary transformations (transformation into continuation-passing style (CPS) and defunctionalization, chiefly) and their left inverses (transformation into direct style and refunctionalization). To this end, we modernize the SECD machine into a bisimilar one that operates in lockstep with the original one but that (1) does not use a data stack and (2) uses the caller-save rather than the callee-save convention for environments. We also identify that the dump component of the SECD machine is managed in a callee-save way. The caller-save counterpart of the modernized SECD machine precisely corresponds to Thielecke’s doublebarrelled continuations and to Felleisen’s encoding of J in terms of call/cc. We then variously characterize the J operator in terms of CPS and in terms of delimited-control operators in the CPS hierarchy. As a byproduct, we also present several reduction semantics for applicative expressions

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We present a systematic construction of a reduction-free normalization function. Starting from

The evaluation function of a reduction semantics (i.e., a small-step operational semantics with an explicit representation of the reduction context) is canonically defined as the transitive closure of (1) decomposing a term into a reduction context and a redex, (2) contracting this redex, and (3) plugging the contractum in the context. Directly implementing this evaluation function therefore yields an interpreter with a worst-case overhead, for each step, that is linear in the size of the input term. We present

The past decade has seen an explosion of work on calculi of explicit substitutions. Numerous work has illustrated the usefulness of these calculi for practical notions like the implementation of typed functional programming languages and higher order proof assistants. It has also been shown that eta reduction is useful for adapting substitution calculi for practical problems like higher order uni cation. This paper concentrates on rewrite rules for eta reduction in three dierent styles of explicit substitution calculi: , se and the suspension calculus. Both and se when extended with eta reduction, have proved useful for solving higher order uni cation. We enlarge the suspension calculus with an adequate eta-reduction which we show to preserve termination and conuence of the associated substitution calculus and to correspond to the eta-reductions of the other two calculi. We prove that and se as well as and the suspension calculus are non comparable while se is more adequate than the suspension calculus in simulating one step of beta-contraction.

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