We unify previous work on the continuation-passing style (CPS) transformations in a generic framework based on Moggi's computational meta-language. This framework is used to obtain CPS transformations for a variety of evaluation strategies and to characterize the corresponding administrative reductions and inverse transformations. We establish generic formal connections between operational semantics and equational theories. Formal properties of transformations for specific evaluation orders follow as corollaries. Essentially, we factor transformations through Moggi's computational meta-language. Mapping -terms into the meta-language captures computational properties (e.g., partiality, strictness) and evaluation order explicitly in both the term and the type structure of the meta-language. The CPS transformation is then obtained by applying a generic transformation from terms and types in the meta-language to CPS terms and types, based on a typed term representation of the continuation ...

The last few years have seen a renewed interest in continuations for expressing advanced control structures in programming languages, and new models such as Abstract Continuations have been proposed to capture these dimensions. This article investigates an alternative formulation, exploiting the latent expressive power of the standard continuation-passing style (CPS) instead of introducing yet other new concepts. We build on a single foundation: abstracting control as a hierarchy of continuations, each one modeling a specific language feature as acting on nested evaluation contexts. We show how iterating the continuation-passing conversion allows us to specify a wide range of control behavior. For example, two conversions yield an abstraction of Prologstyle backtracking. A number of other constructs can likewise be expressed i...

not be interpreted as representing the o cial policies, either expressed or implied, of NSF or the U.S. Government. This thesis describes the design of a meta-logical framework that supports the representation and veri cation of deductive systems, its implementation as an automated theorem prover, and experimental results related to the areas of programming languages, type theory, and logics. Design: The meta-logical framework extends the logical framework LF [HHP93] by a meta-logic M + 2. This design is novel and unique since it allows higher-order encodings of deductive systems and induction principles to coexist. On the one hand, higher-order representation techniques lead to concise and direct encodings of programming languages and logic calculi. Inductive de nitions on the other hand allow the formalization of properties about deductive systems, such as the proof that an operational semantics preserves types or the proof that a logic is is a proof calculus whose proof terms are recursive functions that may be consistent.M +

this paper and the LF. In particular the idea of having an operator T : Prop ! Type appears already in De Bruijn's earlier work, as does the idea of having several judgements. The paper [24] describes the basic features of the LF. In this paper we are going to provide a broader illustration of its applicability and discuss to what extent it is successful. The analysis (of the formal presentation) of a system carried out through encoding often illuminates the system itself. This paper will also deal with this phenomenon.

this paper is to marry effects to monads, writing T for a computation that yields a value in and may have effects delimited by oe. Now we have that ( is

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Using concepts from denotational semantics, we have produced a very simple compiler that can be used to compile standard programming languages and produces object code as efficient as that of production compilers. The compiler is based entirely on source-to-source transformations performed on programs that have been translated into an intermediate language resembling the lambda calculus. The output of the compiler, while still in the intermediate language, can be trivially translated into machine code for the target machine. The compilation by transformation strategy is simple: the goal is to remove any dependencies on the intermediate language semantics that the target machine cannot implement directly. Front-ends have been written for Pascal, BASIC, and Scheme and the compiler produces code for the MC68020 microprocessor. 1 Introduction Denotational semantics has been used as a tool to prove compilers correct and to write compiler generating programs. However it has not generally be...

This paper investigates the transformation of v -terms into continuation-passing style (CPS). We show that by appropriate j-expansion of Fischer and Plotkin's two-pass equational specification of the CPS transform, we can obtain a static and context-free separation of the result terms into "essential" and "administrative" constructs. Interpreting the former as syntax builders and the latter as directly executable code, we obtain a simple and efficient one-pass transformation algorithm, easily extended to conditional expressions, recursive definitions, and similar constructs. This new transformation algorithm leads to a simpler proof of Plotkin's simulation and indifference results. Further we show how CPS-based control operators similar to but more general than Scheme's call/cc can be naturally accommodated by the new transformation algorithm. To demonstrate the expressive power of these operators, we use them to present an equivalent but even more concise formulation of t...

MrSpidey is a user-friendly, interactive static debugger for Scheme. A static debugger supplements the standard debugger by analyzing the program and pinpointing those program operations that may cause run-time errors such as dereferencing the null pointer or applying non-functions. The program analysis of MrSpidey computes value set descriptions for each term in the program and constructs a value flow graph connecting the set descriptions. Using the set descriptions, MrSpidey can identify and highlight potentially erroneous program operations, whose cause the programmer can then explore by selectively exposing portions of the value flow graph. 1 Introduction A reliable program does not mis-apply program operations. Addition always operates on numbers, not strings. Concatenation works with strings, not numbers. To avoid the abuse of program operations, most languages impose a restrictive type system, which forbids the (syntactic) formation of certain faulty program phrases. However, ...

. This paper identifies and solves a class of problems that arise in binding time analysis and more generally in partial evaluation of programs: the approximation and loss of static information due to dynamic expressions with static subexpressions. Solving this class of problems yields substantial binding time improvements and thus dramatically better results not only in the case of partial evaluation but also for static analyses of programs --- this last point actually is related to a theoretical result obtained by Nielson. Our work can also be interpreted as providing a solution to the problem of conditionally static data, the dual of partially static data. We point out which changes in the control flow of a source program may improve its static data flow. Unfortunately they require one to iterate earlier phases of partial evaluation. We show how these changes are subsumed by transforming the source program into continuation-passing style (CPS). The transformed programs get specializ...