We give a recursion-theoretic characterization of FP which describes polynomial time computation independently of any externally imposed resource bounds. In particular, this syntactic characterization avoids the explicit size bounds on recursion (and the initial function 2 |x||y| ) of Cobham.

The purpose of this thesis is to give a "foundational" characterization of some common complexity classes. Such a characterization is distinguished by the fact that no explicit resource bounds are used. For example, we characterize the polynomial time computable functions without making any direct reference to polynomials, time, or even computation. Complexity classes characterized in this way include polynomial time, the functional polytime hierarchy, the logspace decidable problems, and NC. After developing these "resource free" definitions, we apply them to redeveloping the feasible logical system of Cook and Urquhart, and show how this first-order system relates to the second-order system of Leivant. The connection is an interesting one since the systems were defined independently and have what appear to be very different rules for the principle of induction. Furthermore it is interesting to see, albeit in a very specific context, how to retract a second order statement, ("inducti...

Stephen A. Cook and Bruce M. Kapron Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 1 Introduction Functionals are functions which take natural numbers and other functionals as arguments and return natural numbers as values. The class of "feasible" functionals of finite type was introduced in [6] via the typed lambda calculus, and used to interpret certain formal systems of arithmetic: systems capturing the notion of "feasibly constructive proof" (we equate feasibility with polynomial time computability) . Here we name the functionals of [6] the basic feasible functionals and justify the designation by presenting results which include two programming style characterizations of the class. We also give examples of both feasible and infeasible functionals, and argue that the notion plays a natural role in complexity theory. Type 2 functionals take numbers and ordinary numerical functions as arguments. When these argument functions are 0-1 valued (i.e. sets) ...

We demonstrate that the class of rst order functional programs over lists which terminate by multiset path ordering and admit a polynomial quasi-interpretation, is exactly the class of function computable in polynomial time. The interest of this result lies (i) on the simplicity of the conditions on programs to certify their complexity, (ii) on the fact that an important class of natural programs is captured, (iii) and on potential applications on program optimizations. 1 Introduction This paper is part of a general investigation on the implicit complexity of a specication. To illustrate what we mean, we write below the recursive rules that computes the longest common subsequences of two words. More precisely, given two strings u = u1 um and v = v1 vn of f0; 1g , a common subsequence of length k is dened by two sequences of indices i 1 < < i k and j1 < < jk satisfying u i q = v j q . lcs(; y) ! 0 lcs(x; ) ! 0 lcs(i(x); i(y)) ! lcs(x; y) + 1 lcs(i(...

Blum's machine-independent treatment of the complexity of partial recursire functions is extended to relative algorithms (as represented by Turing machines with oracles). We prove relativizations of several results of Blum complexity theory, such as the compression theorem. A recursive relatedness theorem is proved, showing that any two relative complexity measures are related by a fixed recursive function. This theorem allows us to obtain proofs of results for all measures from proofs for a particular measure.

Abstract. Traditional results in subrecursion theory are integrated with the recent work in “predicative recursion ” by defining a simple ranking ρ of all primitive recursive functions. The hierarchy defined by this ranking coincides with the Grzegorczyk hierarchy at and above the linearspace level. Thus, the result is like an extension of the Schwichtenberg/Müller theorems. When primitive recursion is replaced by recursion on notation, the same series of classes is obtained except with the polynomial time computable functions at the first level.

Applicative theories form the basis of Feferman's systems of explicit mathematics, which have been introduced in the early seventies. In an applicative universe, all individuals may be thought of as operations, which can freely be applied to each other: self-application is meaningful, but not necessarily total. It has turned out that theories with self-application provide a natural setting for studying notions of abstract computability, especially from a proof-theoretic perspective.

We are motivated by finding a good basis for the semantics of programming languages and investigate small classes in subrecursive hierarchies of functions. We do this with the help of pairing functions because in this way we can explore the amazing coding powers of S-expressions of LISP within the domain of natural numbers. In the process of doing this we introduce a missing stage in Grzegorczyk-based hierarchies which solves the longstanding open problem of what is the precise relation between the small recursive classes and those of complexity theory. 1 Introduction We investigate subrecursive hierarchies based on pairing functions and solve a longstanding open problem in small recursive classes of what is the relationship between these and computational complexity classes (see [11]). The problem is solved by discovering that there is a missing stage in Grzegorczyk-based hierarchies [7, 11]. The motivation for this research comes from our search for a good programming langu...

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We explore recursion theory on the reals, the analog counterpart of recursive function theory. In recursion theory on the reals, the discrete operations of standard recursion theory are replaced by operations on continuous functions, such as composition and various forms of differential equations. We define classes of real recursive functions, in a manner similar to the classical approach in recursion theory, and we study their complexity. In particular, we prove both upper and lower bounds for several classes of real recursive functions, which lie inside the primitive recursive functions and, therefore, can be characterized in terms of standard computational complexity.