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...

A functor is a parameterized program module i.e. a function that takes modules as arguments and returns a module as its result. A higher-order functor deals in the same way with modules whose components are functors themselves. We propose to develop a generic compilation system for the construction of high-performance mathematical software libraries for scientific and technical application domains. This system has the following features: 1. It is based on a powerful higher-order functor language. 2. It is an open library that can be retargeted to any core language. 3. It is able to resolve functor instantiation at compile-time. The functor language is expressive enough to build all types and type constructors without referring to the core language (thus maximizing flexibility) and to express all interactions between modules by parameterization (thus maximizing reusability). By compile-time instantiation, genericity does not cause any execution overhead; by automatically sharing instant...

Dependent type theory is a proven technology for verified functional programming in which programs and their correctness proofs may be developed using the same rules in a single formal system. In practice, large portions of programs developed in this way have no computational relevance to the ultimate result of the program and should therefore be removed prior to program execution. In previous work on identifying and removing irrelevant portions of programs, computational irrelevance is usually treated as an intrinsic property of program expressions. We find that such an approach forces programmers to maintain two copies of commonly used datatypes: a computationally relevant one and a computationally irrelevant one. We instead develop an extrinsic notion of computational irrelevance and find that it yields several benefits including (1) avoidance of the above mentioned code duplication problem; (2) an identification of computational irrelevance with a highly general form of parametric polymorphism; and (3) an elective (i.e., user-2 directed) notion of proof irrelevance. We also develop a program analysis for identifying irrelevant expressions and show how previously studied types embodying computational irrelevance (including subset types and squash types) are expressible in the extension of type theory developed herein.