This paper surveys a part of the theory of fi-reduction in -calculus which might aptly be called perpetual reductions. The theory is concerned with perpetual reduction strategies, i.e., reduction strategies that compute infinite reduction paths from -terms (when possible), and with perpetual redexes, i.e., redexes whose contraction in -terms preserves the possibility (when present) of infinite reduction paths. The survey not only recasts classical theorems in a unified setting, but also offers new results, proofs, and techniques, as well as a number of applications to problems in -calculus and type theory. 1. Introduction Considerable attention has been devoted to classification of reduction strategies in type-free -calculus [4, 6, 7, 15, 38, 44, 81]---see also [2, Ch. 13]. We are concerned with strategies differing in the length of reduction paths. This paper draws on several sources. In late 1994, van Raamsdonk and Severi [59] and Srensen [66, 67] independently developed ...

We present two characterizations of perpetual redexes, which are redexes whose contractions retain the possibility of infinite reductions. These characterizations generalize and strengthen existing criteria for the perpetuality of redexes in orthogonal Term Rewriting Systems and the -calculus due to Bergstra and Klop, and others. To unify our results with those in the literature, we introduce Context-sensitive Conditional Expression Reduction Systems (CCERSs) and prove confluence for orthogonal CCERSs. We then define a perpetual one-step reduction strategy which enables one to construct minimal (w.r.t. Levy's permutation ordering on reductions) infinite reductions in orthogonal CCERSs. We then prove (1) perpetuality (in a specific context) of a redex whose contraction does not erase potentially infinite arguments, which are possibly finite (i.e., strongly normalizable) arguments that may become infinite after a number of outside steps, and (2) perpetuality (in every con...

This paper surveys a part of the theory of fi-reduction in λ-calculus which might aptly be called perpetual reductions. The theory is concerned with perpetual reduction strategies, i.e., reduction strategies that compute infinite reduction paths from λ-terms (when possible), and with perpetual redexes, i.e., redexes whose contraction in λ-terms preserves the possibility (when present) of infinite reduction paths. The survey not only recasts classical theorems in a unified setting, but also offers new results, proofs, and techniques, as well as a number of applications to problems in λ-calculus and type theory.