The Damas-Milner Calculus is the typed -calculus underlying the type system for ML and several other strongly typed polymorphic functional languages such as Miranda 1 and Haskell. Mycroft has extended its problematic monomorphic typing rule for recursive definitions with a polymorphic typing rule. He proved the resulting type system, which we call the Milner-Mycroft Calculus, sound with respect to Milner's semantics, and showed that it preserves the principal typing property of the Damas-Milner Calculus. The extension is of practical significance in typed logic programming languages and, more generally, in any language with (mutually) recursive definitions. In this paper we show that the type inference problem for the Milner-Mycroft Calculus is log-space equivalent to semi-unification, the problem of solving subsumption inequations between first-order terms. This result has been proved independently by Kfoury, Tiuryn, and Urzyczyn. In connection with the recently establish...

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In this paper we give a programmatic overview of parameterized computational complexity in the broad context of the problem of coping with computational intractability. We give some examples of how fixed-parameter tractability techniques can deliver practical algorithms in two different ways: (1) by providing useful exact algorithms for small parameter ranges, and (2) by providing guidance in the design of heuristic algorithms. In particular, we describe an improved FPT kernelization algorithm for Vertex Cover, a practical FPT algorithm for the Maximum Agreement Subtree (MAST) problem parameterized by the number of species to be deleted, and new general heuristics for these problems based on FPT techniques. In the course of making this overview, we also investigate some structural and hardness issues. We prove that an important naturally parameterized problem in artificial intelligence, STRIPS Planning (where the parameter is the size of the plan) is complete for W [1]. As a corollary, this implies that k-Step Reachability for Petri Nets is complete for W [1]. We describe how the concept of treewidth can be applied to STRIPS Planning and other problems of logic to obtain FPT results. We describe a surprising structural result concerning the top end of the parameterized complexity hierarchy: the naturally parameterized Graph k-Coloring problem cannot be resolved with respect to XP either by showing membership in XP, or by showing hardness for XP without settling the P = NP question one way or the other.

Many natural computational problems have input consisting of two or more parts. For example, the input might consist of a graph and a positive integer. For many natural problems we may view one of the inputs as a parameter and study how the complexity of the problem varies if the parameter is held fixed. For many applications of computational problems involving such a parameter, only a small range of parameter values is of practical significance, so that fixedparameter complexity is a natural concern. In studying the complexity of such problems, it is therefore important to have a framework in which we can make qualitative distinctions about the contribution of the parameter to the complexity of the problem. In this paper we survey one such framework for investigating parameterized computational complexity and present a number of new results for this theory.

Girard and Reynolds independently invented System F (a.k.a. the second-order polymorphically typed lambda calculus) to handle problems in logic and computer programming language design, respectively. Viewing F in the Curry style, which associates types with untyped lambda terms, raises the questions of typability and type checking . Typability asks for a term whether there exists some type it can be given. Type checking asks, for a particular term and type, whether the term can be given that type. The decidability of these problems has been settled for restrictions and extensions of F and related systems and complexity lower-bounds have been determined for typability in F, but this report is the rst to resolve whether these problems are decidable for System F. This report proves that type checking in F is undecidable, by a reduction from semiuni cation, and that typability in F is undecidable, by a reduction from type checking. Because there is an easy reduction from typability to typ...

March 1, 2002 Rodney G. Downey Department of Mathematics, Victoria University P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand downey@math.vuw.ac.nz Michael R. Fellows, Bruce M. Kapron and Michael T. Hallett Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P6 Canada contact author: mfellows@csr.uvic.ca H. Todd Wareham Department of Computer Science Memorial University of Newfoundland St. Johns, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 Canada harold@odie.cs.mun.ca Summary The theory of parameterized computational complexity introduced in [DF1-3] appears to be of wide applicability in the study of the complexity of concrete problems [ADF,BFH,DEF,FHW,FK]. We believe the theory may be of particular importance to practical applications of logic formalisms in programming language design and in system specification. The reason for this relevance is that while many computational problems in logic are extremely intractable generally, realistic applications often involve a "hidden parameter" according to which the computational problem may be feasible according to the more sensitive criteria of fixed-parameter tractability that is the central issue in parameterized computational complexity. We illustrate how this theory may apply to problems in logic, programming languages and linguistics by describing some examples of both tractability and intractability results in these areas. It is our strong expectation that these results are just the tip of the iceberg of interesting applications of parameterized complexity theory to logic and linguistics. The main results described in this abstract are as follows. (1) The problem of determining whether a word x can be derived in k steps in a context-sensitive grammar G (Short CSL Derivation) is complete for the paramet...

Reynolds' Parametricity Theorem (also known as the Abstraction Theorem), a result concerning the model theory of the second order polymorphic typed -calculus (F 2 ), has recently been used by Wadler to prove some unusual and interesting properties of programs. We present a purely syntactic version of the Parametricity Theorem, showing that it is simply an example of formal theorem proving in second order minimal logic over a first order equivalence theory on -terms. We analyze the use of parametricity in proving program equivalences, and show that structural induction is still required: parametricity is not enough. As in Leivant's transparent presentation of Girard's Representation Theorem for F 2 , we show that algorithms can be extracted from the proofs, such that if a -term can be proven parametric, we can synthesize from the proof an "equivalent" parametric -term that is moreover F 2 -typable. Given that Leivant showed how proofs of termination, based on inductive data types and s...

We investigate finite-rank intersection type systems, analyzing the complexity of their type inference problems and their relation to the problem of recognizing semantically equivalent terms. Intersection types allow something of type T1 /\ T2 to be used in some places at type T1 and in other places at type T2 . A finite-rank intersection type system bounds how deeply the /\ can appear in type expressions. Such type systems enjoy strong normalization, subject reduction, and computable type inference, and they support a pragmatics for implementing parametric polymorphism. As a consequence, they provide a conceptually simple and tractable alternative to the impredicative polymorphism of System F and its extensions, while typing many more programs than the Hindley-Milner type system found in ML and Haskell. While type inference is computable at every rank, we show that its complexity grows exponentially as rank increases. Let K(0, n) = n and K(t + 1, n) = 2^K(t,n); we prove that recognizing the pure lambda-terms of size n that are typable at rank k is complete for dtime[K(k-1, n)]. We then consider the problem of deciding whether two lambda-terms typable at rank k have the same normal form, Generalizing a well-known result of Statman from simple types to finite-rank intersection types. ...

In this note, we reprove a theorem of Statman that deciding the fij-equality of two firstorder typable -terms is not elementary recursive [Sta79]. The basic idea of our proof, like that of Statman's, is the Henkin quantifier elimination procedure [Hen63]. However, our coding is much simpler, and easy to understand. 1 Introduction A well known theorem of Richard Statman states that if we have two -terms that are first-order typable, deciding whether the terms reduce to the same normal form is not Kalmar elementary: namely, it cannot be decided in f k (n) steps for any fixed integer k 0, where n is the length of the two terms, and f 0 (n) = n, f t+1 (n) = 2 f t (n) . The theorem is often cited, but in contrast, its proof is not well understood. In this note, we give a simple proof of the theorem. The key idea that vastly simplifies the technical details of the proof is to use list iteration as a quantifier elimination procedure. 2 Preliminaries 2.1 Deciding truth of formulas in high...

We investigate the computational efficiency of the sharing graphs of Lamping [Lam90], Gonthier, Abadi, and L'evy [GAL92], and Asperti [Asp94], designed to effect so-called optimal evaluation, with the goal of reconciling optimality, efficiency, and the clarification of reasonable cost models for the -calculus. Do these graphs suggest reasonable cost models for the -calculus? If they are optimal, are they efficient? We present a brief survey of these optimal evaluators, identifying their common characteristics, as well as their shared failures. We give a lower bound on the efficiency of sharing graphs by identifying a class of -terms that are normalizable in \Theta(n) time, and require \Theta(n) "fan interactions, " but require\Omega\Gammaq n ) bookkeeping steps. For [GAL92], we analyze this anomaly in terms of the dynamic maintenance of deBruijn indices for intermediate terms. We give another lower bound showing that sharing graphs can do \Omega\Gammao n ) work (via fan interactio...