ion for the Lazy -calculus Samson Abramsky Guy McCusker Department of Computing Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine 180 Queen's Gate London SW7 2BZ United Kingdom Abstract We define a category of games G, and its extensional quotient E . A model of the lazy -calculus, a type-free functional language based on evaluation to weak head normal form, is given in G, yielding an extensional model in E . This model is shown to be fully abstract with respect to applicative simulation. This is, so far as we know, the first purely semantic construction of a fully abstract model for a reflexively-typed sequential language. 1 Introduction Full Abstraction is a key concept in programming language semantics [9, 12, 23, 26]. The ingredients are as follows. We are given a language L, with an `observational preorder' - on terms in L such that P - Q means that every observable property of P is also satisfied by Q; and a denotational model MJ\DeltaK. The model M is then said to be f...

E-mail: howe research.att.com We give a method for proving congruence of bisimulation-like equivalences in functional programming languages. The method applies to languages that can be presented as a set of expressions together with an evaluation relation. We use this method to show that some generalizations of Abramsky's applicative bisimulation are congruences whenever evaluation can be specified by a certain natural form of structured operational semantics. One of the generalizations handles nondeterminism and diverging computations.] 1996 Academic Press, Inc. 1.

Run-time type dispatch enables a variety of advanced optimization techniques for polymorphic languages, including tag-free garbage collection, unboxed function arguments, and flattened data structures. However, modern type-preserving compilers transform types between stages of compilation, making type dispatch prohibitively complex at low levels of typed compilation. It is crucial therefore for type analysis at these low levels to refer to the types of previous stages. Unfortunately, no current intermediate language supports this facility. To fill this gap, we present the language LX, which provides a rich language of type constructors supporting type analysis (possibly of previous-stage types) as a programming idiom. This language is quite flexible, supporting a variety of other applications such as analysis of quantified types, analysis with incomplete type information, and type classes. We also show that LX is compatible with a type-erasure semantics. 1 Introduction Type-directed co...

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Moggi's computational lambda calculus is a metalanguage for denotational semantics which arose from the observation that many different notions of computation have the categorical structure of a strong monad on a cartesian closed category. In this paper we show that the computational lambda calculus also arises naturally as the term calculus corresponding (by the Curry-Howard correspondence) to a novel intuitionistic modal propositional logic. We give natural deduction, sequent calculus and Hilbert-style presentations of this logic and prove a strong normalisation result. 1 Introduction The computational lambda calculus was introduced by Moggi as a metalanguage for denotational semantics which more faithfully models real programming language features such as non-termination, differing evaluation strategies, non-determinism and side-effects than does the ordinary simply typed lambda calculus [17, 18]. The starting point for Moggi's work is an explicit semantic distinction between compu...

The statement S T in a -calculus with subtyping is traditionally interpreted as a semantic coercion function of type [[S]]![[T ]] that extracts the "T part" of an element of S. If the subtyping relation is restricted to covariant positions, this interpretation may be enriched to include both the coercion and an overwriting function put[S; T ] 2 [[S]]![[T ]]![[S]] that updates the T part of an element of S.

Bisimilarity (also known as `applicative bisimulation ') has attracted a good deal of attention as an operational equivalence for -calculi. It approximates or even equals Morris-style contextual equivalence and admits proofs of program equivalence via co-induction. It has an elementary construction from the operational definition of a language. We consider bisimilarity for one of the typed object calculi of Abadi and Cardelli. By defining a labelled transition system for the calculus in the style of Crole and Gordon and using a variation of Howe's method we establish two central results: that bisimilarity is a congruence, and that it equals contextual equivalence. So two objects are bisimilar iff no amount of programming can tell them apart. Our third contribution is to show that bisimilarity soundly models the equational theory of Abadi and Cardelli. This is the first study of contextual equivalence for an object calculus and the first application of Howe's method to subtyping. By the...

Functional programming languages have banned assignment because of its undesirable properties. The reward of this rigorous decision is that functional programming languages are side-effect free. There is another side to the coin: because assignment plays a crucial role in Input/Output (I/O), functional languages have a hard time dealing with I/O. Functional programming languages have therefore often been stigmatised as inferior to imperative programming languages because they cannot deal with I/0 very well. In this paper we show that I/O can be incorporated in a functional programming language without loss of any of the generally accepted advantages of functional programming languages. This discussion is supported by an extensive account of the I/O system offered by the lazy, purely functional programming language Clean. Two aspects that are paramount in its I/O stem make the approach novel with respect to other approaches. These aspects are the technique of explicit multiple environment passing, and the Event I/O framework to program Graphical User I/O in a highly structured and high-level way. Clean file I/O is as powerful and flexible as it is in common imperative languages (one can read, write, and seek directly in a file). Clean Event I/O provides programmers with a high-level framework to specify complex Graphical User I/O. It has been used to write applications such as a window-based text editor, an object based drawing program, a relational database, and a spreadsheet program. These graphical interactive programs are completely machine independent, but still obey the look-and-feel of the concrete window environment being used. The specifications are completely functional and make extensive use of uniqueness typing, higher-order functions, and algebraic data type...

This paper describes the construction of categorical models for the nu-calculus, a language that combines higher-order functions with dynamically created names. Names are created with local scope, they can be compared with each other and passed around through function application, but that is all. The intent behind this language is to examine one aspect of the imperative character of Standard ML: the use of local state by dynamic creation of references. The nu-calculus is equivalent to a certain fragment of ML, omitting side effects, exceptions, datatypes and recursion. Even without all these features, the interaction of name creation with higher-order functions can be complex and subtle; it is particularly difficult to characterise the observable behaviour of expressions. Categorical monads, in the style of Moggi, are used to build denotational models for the nu-calculus. An intermediate stage is the use of a computational metalanguage, which distinguishes in the type system between values and computations. The general requirements for a categorical model are presented, and two specific examples described in detail. These provide a sound denotational semantics for the nu-calculus, and can be used to reason about observable equivalence in the language. In particular a model using logical relations is fully abstract for first-order expressions.

We adopt the untyped imperative object calculus of Abadi and Cardelli as a minimal setting in which to study problems of compilation and program equivalence that arise when compiling objectoriented languages. We present both a big-step and a small-step substitution-based operational semantics for the calculus. Our rst two results are theorems asserting the equivalence of our substitutionbased semantics with a closure-based semantics like that given by Abadi and Cardelli. Our third result is a direct proof of the correctness of compilation to a stack-based abstract machine via a small-step decompilation algorithm. Our fourth result is that contextual equivalence of objects coincides with a form of Mason and Talcott's CIU equivalence; the latter provides a tractable means of establishing operational equivalences. Finally, we prove correct an algorithm, used in our prototype compiler, for statically resolving method osets. This is the rst study of correctness of an object-oriented abstract machine, and of operational equivalence for the imperative object calculus.