Most often, in a categorical semantics for a programming language, the substitution of terms is expressed by composition and finite products. However this does not deal with the order of evaluation of arguments, which may have major consequences when there are side-effects. In this paper Cartesian effect categories are introduced for solving this issue, and they are compared with strong monads, Freydcategories and Haskell’s Arrows. It is proved that a Cartesian effect category is a Freyd-category where the premonoidal structure is provided by a kind of binary product, called the sequential product. The universal property of the sequential product provides Cartesian effect categories with a powerful tool for constructions and proofs. To our knowledge, both effect categories and sequential products are new notions. Keywords. Categorical logic, computational effects, monads, Freyd-categories, premonoidal categories, Arrows, sequential product, effect categories, Cartesian effect categories.

Abstract. Monads are a well-established tool for modelling various computational effects. They form the semantic basis of Moggi’s computational metalanguage, the metalanguage of effects for short, which made its way into modern functional programming in the shape of Haskell’s do-notation. Standard computational idioms call for specific classes of monads that support additional control operations. Here, we introduce Kleene monads, which additionally feature nondeterministic choice and Kleene star, i.e. nondeterministic iteration, and we provide a metalanguage and a sound calculus for Kleene monads, the metalanguage of control and effects, which is the natural joint extension of Kleene algebra and the metalanguage of effects. This provides a framework for studying abstract program equality focussing on iteration and effects. These aspects are known to have decidable equational theories when studied in isolation. However, it is well known that decidability breaks easily; e.g. the Horn theory of continuous Kleene algebras fails to be recursively enumerable. Here, we prove several negative results for the metalanguage of control and effects; in particular, already the equational theory of the unrestricted metalanguage of control and effects over continuous Kleene monads fails to be recursively enumerable. We proceed to identify a fragment of this language which still contains both Kleene algebra and the metalanguage of effects and for which the natural axiomatisation is complete, and indeed the equational theory is decidable. 1

The incremental approach to modular monadic semantics constructs complex monads by using monad transformers to add computational features to a preexisting monad. A complication of this approach is that the operations associated to the pre-existing monad need to be lifted to the new monad. In a companion paper by Jaskelioff, the lifting problem has been addressed in the setting of system F ω. Here, we recast and extend those results in a category-theoretic setting. We abstract and generalize from monads to monoids (in a monoidal category), and from monad transformers to monoid transformers. The generalization brings more simplicity and clarity, and opens the way for lifting of operations with applicability beyond monads. Key words: Monad, Monoid, Monoidal Category

Abstract. The finite π-calculus has an explicit set-theoretic functor-category model that is known to be fully abstract for strong late bisimulation congruence. We characterize this as the initial free algebra for an appropriate set of operations and equations in the enriched Lawvere theories of Plotkin and Power. Thus we obtain a novel algebraic description for models of the π-calculus, and validate an existing construction as the universal such model. The algebraic operations are intuitive, covering name creation, communication of names over channels, and nondeterminism; the equations then combine these features in a modular fashion. We work in an enriched setting, over a “possible worlds ” category of sets indexed by available names. This expands significantly on the classical notion of algebraic theories, and in particular allows us to use nonstandard arities that vary as processes evolve. Based on our algebraic theory we describe a category of models for the π-calculus, and show that they all preserve bisimulation congruence. We develop a direct construction of free models in this category; and generalise previous results to prove that all free-algebra models are fully abstract. 1

We develop a model of concurrent imperative programming with threads. We focus on a small imperative language with cooperative threads which execute without interruption until they terminate or explicitly yield control. We define and study a trace-based denotational but mathematically elementary. We also give an equational theory for the computational effects that underlie the language, including thread spawning. We then analyze threads in terms of the free algebra monad for this theory.

We develop a model of concurrent imperative programming with threads. We focus on a small imperative language with cooperative threads which execute without interruption until they terminate or explicitly yield control. We define and study a trace-based denotational but mathematically elementary. We also give an equational theory for the computational effects that underlie the language, including thread spawning. We then analyze threads in terms of the free algebra monad for this theory.

Generalised Distributive laws in Computer Science are rules governing the transformation of one programming structure into another. In programming, they are programs satisfying certain formal conditions. Their importance has been to date documented in several isolated cases by diverse formal approaches. These applications have always meant leaps in understanding the nature of the subject. However, distributive laws have not yet been given the attention they deserve. One of the reasons for this omission is certainly the lack of a formal notion of distributive laws in their full generality. This hinders the discovery and formal description of occurrences of distributive laws, which is the precursor of any formal manipulation. In this thesis, an approach to formalisation of distributive laws is presented based on the functorial approach to formal Category Theory pioneered by Lawvere and others, notably Gray. The proposed formalism discloses a rather simple nature of distributive laws of the kind found in programming structures based on lax 2-naturality and Gray’s tensor product of 2-categories. It generalises the existing more specific notions of distributive

Effects are a powerful and convenient component of programming. They enable programmers to interact with the user, take advantage of efficient stateful memory, throw exceptions, and nondeterministically execute programs in parallel. However, they also complicate every aspect of reasoning about a program or language, and as a result it is crucially important to have a good understanding of what effects are and how they work. In this paper we present a new framework for formalizing the semantics of effects that is more general and thorough than previous techniques while clarifying many of the important concepts. By returning to the categorytheoretic roots of monads, our framework is rich enough to describe the semantics of effects for a large class of languages including common imperative and functional languages. It is also capable of capturing more expressive, precise, and practical effect systems than previous approaches. Finally, our framework enables one to reason about effects in a language-independent manner, and so can be applied to many stages of language design and implementation in order to create more broadly applicable tools for programming languages. 1.

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We consider the language of “extended subsitutions ” involving both angelic and demonic choice. For other related languages expressing program semantics the implicit model of computation is based on a combination of monads by a distributive law. We show how the model of computation underlying extended subsitutions is based on a monad which, while not being a compound monad, has strong similarities to a compound monad based on a distributive law. We discuss these compound monads and monad morphisms between them. We have used the theorem prover Isabelle to formalise and machine-check our results.