The choice of a parameter-passing technique is an important decision in the design of a high-level programming language. To clarify some of the semantic aspects of the decision, we develop, analyze, and compare modifications of the -calculus for the most common parameter-passing techniques, i.e., call-by-value and call-by-name combined with pass-by-worth and passby -reference, respectively. More specifically, for each parameter-passing technique we provide 1. a program rewriting semantics for a language with side-effects and first-class procedures based on the respective parameter-passing technique; 2. an equational theory that is derived from the rewriting semantics in a uniform manner; 3. a formal analysis of the correspondence between the calculus and the semantics; and 4. a strong normalization theorem for the imperative fragment of the theory (when applicable). A comparison of the various systems reveals that Algol's call-by-name indeed satisfies the well-known fi rule of the orig...

An overview of linear logic is given, including an extensive bibliography and a simple example of the close relationship between linear logic and computation.

Girard's original definition of proof nets for linear logic involves boxes. The box is the unit for erasing and duplicating fragments of proof nets. It imposes synchronization, limits sharing, and impedes a completely local view of computation. Here we describe an implementation of proof nets without boxes. Proof nets are translated into graphs of the sort used in optimal -calculus implementations; computation is performed by simple graph rewriting. This graph implementation helps in understanding optimal reductions in the -calculus and in the various programming languages inspired by linear logic. 1 Beyond the -calculus The -calculus is not entirely explicit about the operations of erasing and duplicating arguments. These operations are important both in the theory of the - calculus and in its implementations, yet they are typically treated somewhat informally, implicitly. The proof nets of linear logic [1] provide a refinement of the -calculus where these operations become explici...

Introduction If we consider the interpretation of proofs as programs, say in intuitionistic logic, the question of equality between proofs becomes crucial: The syntax introduces meaningless distinctions whereas the (denotational) semantics makes excessive identifications. This question does not have a simple answer in general, but it leads to the notion of proof-net, which is one of the main novelties of linear logic. This has been already explained in [Gir87] and [GLT89]. The notion of interaction net introduced in [Laf90] comes from an attempt to implement the reduction of these proof-nets. It happens to be a simple model of parallel computation, and so it can be presented independently of linear logic, as in [Laf94]. However, we think that it is also useful to relate the exact origin of interaction nets, especially for readers with some knowledge in linear logic. We take this opportunity to give a survey of the theory of proof-nets, including a new proof of the sequentializ

This paper is an overview of existing applications of Linear Logic (LL) to issues of computation. After a substantial introduction to LL, it discusses the implications of LL to functional programming, logic programming, concurrent and object-oriented programming and some other applications of LL, like semantics of negation in LP, non-monotonic issues in AI planning, etc. Although the overview covers pretty much the state-of-the-art in this area, by necessity many of the works are only mentioned and referenced, but not discussed in any considerable detail. The paper does not presuppose any previous exposition to LL, and is addressed more to computer scientists (probably with a theoretical inclination) than to logicians. The paper contains over 140 references, of which some 80 are about applications of LL. 1 Linear Logic Linear Logic (LL) was introduced in 1987 by Girard [62]. From the very beginning it was recognized as relevant to issues of computation (especially concurrency and stat...

We introduce a new class of higher order rewriting systems, called Interaction Systems (IS's). IS's come from Lafont's (Intuitionistic) Interaction Nets [Lafont 1990] by dropping the linearity constraint. In particular, we borrow from Interaction Nets the syntactical bipartitions of operators into constructors and destructors and the principle of binary interaction. As a consequence, IS's are a subclass of Klop's Combinatory Reduction Systems [Klop 1980] where the Curry-Howard analogy still "makes sense". Destructors and constructors respectively corresponds to left and right logical introduction rules, interaction is cut and reduction is cut-elimination. Interaction Systems have been primarily motivated by the necessity of extending the practice of optimal evaluators for -calculus [Lamping 1990, Gonthier et al. 1992a] to other computational constructs as conditionals and recursion. In this paper we focus on the theoretical aspects of optimal reductions. In particular, we ge...

this paper was quite di#erent, stemming from the axiomatics of categories of tangles (although the authors were aware of possible connections to iteration theories. In fact, similar axiomatics in the symmetric case, motivated by flowcharts and "flownomials" had been developed some years earlier by Stefanescu (Stefanescu 2000).) However, the first author realized, following a stimulating discussion with Gordon Plotkin, that traced monoidal categories provided a common denominator for the axiomatics of both the Girard-style and Abramsky-Jagadeesan-style versions of the Geometry of Interaction, at the basic level of the multiplicatives. This insight was presented in (Abramsky 1996), in which Girard-style GoI was dubbed "particle-style", since it concerns information particles or tokens flowing around a network, while the Abramsky-Jagadeesan style GoI was dubbed "wave-style", since it concerns the evolution of a global information state or "wave". Formally, this distinction is based on whether the tensor product (i.e. the symmetric monoidal structure) in the underlying category is interpreted as a coproduct (particle style) or as a product (wave style). This computational distinction between coproduct and product interpretations of the same underlying network geometry turned out to have been partially anticipated, in a rather di#erent context, in a pioneering paper by E. S. Bainbridge (Bainbridge 1976), as observed by Dusko Pavlovic. These two forms of interpretation, and ways of combining them, have also been studied recently in (Stefanescu 2000). He uses the terminology "additive" for coproduct-based (i.e. our "particle-style") and "multiplicative" for product-based (i.e. our "wave-style"); this is not suitable for our purposes, because of the clash with Linear Logic term...

This paper is concerned with the study of cyclic - graphs. The starting point is to treat a -graph as a system of recursion equations involving -terms, and to manipulate such systems in an unrestricted manner, using equational logic, just as is possible for firstorder term rewriting. Surprisingly, now the confluence property breaks down in an essential way. Confluence can be restored by introducing a restraining mechanism on the `copying' operation. This leads to a family of -graph calculi, which are inspired by the family of oe-calculi (-calculi with explicit substitution) . However, these concern acyclic expressions only. In this paper we are not concerned with optimality questions for acyclic -reduction. We also indicate how Wadsworth's interpreter can be simulated in the -graph rewrite rules that we propose. Introduction As shown in recent years, first-order orthogonal term rewriting [8, 19] has quite pleasant confluent extensions to the case where cycles are admitted (term grap...

We extend the multiplicative fragment of linear logic with a non-commutative connective (called before), which, roughly speaking, corresponds to sequential composition. This lead us to a calculus where the conclusion of a proof is a Partially Ordered MultiSET of formulae. We firstly examine coherence semantics, where we introduce the before connective, and ordered products of formulae. Secondly we extend the syntax of multiplicative proof nets to these new operations. We then prove strong normalisation, and confluence. Coming back to the denotational semantics that we started with, we establish in an unusual way the soundness of this calculus with respect to the semantics. The converse, i.e. a kind of completeness result, is simply stated: we refer to a report for its lengthy proof. We conclude by mentioning more results, including a sequent calculus which is interpreted by both the semantics and the proof net syntax, although we are not sure that it takes all proof nets into account...

This paper is the continuation of the author 's work on interaction nets, inspired by Girard's proof nets for linear logic, but no preliminary knowledge of these topics is required for its reading. Introduction