Abstract not found

Free theorems feature prominently in the field of program transformation for pure functional languages such as Haskell. However, somewhat disappointingly, the semantic properties of so based transformations are often established only very superficially. This paper is intended as a case study showing how to use the existing theoretical foundations and formal methods for improving the situation. To that end, we investigate the correctness issue for a new transformation rule in the short cut fusion family. This destroy/build-rule provides a certain reconciliation between the competing foldr/build- and destroy/unfoldr-approaches to eliminating intermediate lists. Our emphasis is on systematically and rigorously developing the rule’s correctness proof, even while paying attention to semantic aspects like potential nontermination and mixed strict/nonstrict evaluation.

Abstract: Free theorems establish interesting properties of parametrically polymorphic functions, solely from their types, and serve as a nice proof tool. For pure and lazy functional programming languages, they can be used with very few preconditions. Unfortunately, in the presence of selective strictness, as provided in languages like Haskell, their original strength is reduced. In this paper we present an approach for restrengthening them. By a refined type system which tracks the use of strict evaluation, we rule out unnecessary restrictions that otherwise emerge from the general suspicion that strict evaluation may be used at any point. Additionally, we provide an implemented algorithm determining all refined types for a given term. 1

Abstract programming supports the separation of logical concerns from issues of control in program construction. While this separation of concerns leads to reduced code size and increased reusability of code, its main disadvantage is the computational overhead it incurs. Fusion techniques can be used to combine the reusability of abstract programs with the e#ciency of specialized programs.

We study various shortcut fusion rules for languages like Haskell. Following a careful semantic account of a recently proposed rule for circular program transformation, we propose a new rule that trades circularity for higher-orderedness, and thus attains better semantic properties. This also leads us to revisit the original foldr/build-rule, as well as its dual, and to develop variants that do not suffer from detrimental impacts of Haskell’s mixed strict/nonstrict semantics. Throughout, we offer pragmatic insights about our new rules to investigate also their relative effectiveness, rather than just their semantic correctness.

Type-based reasoning is popular in functional programming. In particular, parametric polymorphism constrains functions in such a way that statements about their behavior can be derived without consulting function definitions. Is the same possible in a strongly, and polymorphically, typed functional logic language? This is the question we study in this paper. Logical features like nondeterminism and free variables cause interesting effects, which we examine based on examples and address by identifying appropriate conditions that guarantee standard free theorems or inequational versions thereof to hold.

Classical deforestation methods fail to compose functions with accumulating parameters, which are function arguments to which intermediate result accumulates. This paper proposes a new deforestation method which solves this problem. The method is comprised of a few transformation steps, each of which is guided by type information. Though our solution draws its fundamental idea from a deforestation method that has been developed for attribute grammars, it is not merely a recast of an existing technique to another formalism. The new method provides a type-based account for the existing attribute grammar deforestation process. Further, it can deforest a class of functions that the attribute grammar deforestation cannot. These advantages are demonstrated by a few examples. It is also shown that the new method is as powerful as another method that has been developed for macro tree transducer composition.

Several induction theorem provers were developed to verify functional programs mechanically. Unfortunately, automatic verification often fails for functions with accumulating arguments. Using concepts from the theory of tree transducers and extending on earlier work, the paper develops automatic transformations from accumulative functional programs into nonaccumulative ones, which are much better suited for mechanized verification. The overall goal is to reduce the need for generalizing induction hypotheses in (semi-)automatic provers. Via the correspondence between imperative programs and tail-recursive functions, the presented approach can also help to reduce the need for inventing loop invariants in the verification of imperative programs. 1

Many predominantly lazy languages now incorporate strictness enforcing primitives, for example a strict let or sequential composition seq. Reasons for doing this include gains in time or space efficiencies, or control of parallel evaluation. This thesis studies how to prove equivalences between programs in languages with selective strictness, specifically, we use a restricted core lazy functional language with a selective strictness operator seq whose operational semantics is a variant of one considered by van Eckelen and de Mol, which itself was derived from Launchbury’s natural semantics for lazy evaluation. The main research contributions are as follows: We establish some of the first ever equivalences between programs with selective strictness. We do this by manipulating operational semantics derivations, in

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