Syntax Involving Binders Murdoch Gabbay Cambridge University DPMMS Cambridge CB2 1SB, UK M.J.Gabbay@cantab.com Andrew Pitts Cambridge University Computer Laboratory Cambridge CB2 3QG, UK ap@cl.cam.ac.uk Abstract The Fraenkel-Mostowski permutation model of set theory with atoms (FM-sets) can serve as the semantic basis of meta-logics for specifying and reasoning about formal systems involving name binding, ff-conversion, capture avoiding substitution, and so on. We show that in FM-set theory one can express statements quantifying over `fresh' names and we use this to give a novel set-theoretic interpretation of name abstraction. Inductively defined FM-sets involving this name-abstraction set former (together with cartesian product and disjoint union) can correctly encode object-level syntax modulo ff-conversion. In this way, the standard theory of algebraic data types can be extended to encompass signatures involving binding operators. In particular, there is an associated n...

. The dynamics of reactive systems, e.g. CCS, has often been de ned using a labelled transition system (LTS). More recently it has become natural in de ning dynamics to use reaction rules | i.e. unlabelled transition rules | together with a structural congruence. But LTSs lead more naturally to behavioural equivalences. So one would like to derive from reaction rules a suitable LTS. This paper shows how to derive an LTS for a wide range of reactive systems. A label for an agent a is de ned to be any context F which intuitively is just large enough so that the agent Fa (\a in context F ") is able to perform a reaction. The key contribution of this paper is a precise de nition of \just large enough", in terms of the categorical notion of relative pushout (RPO), which ensures that bisimilarity is a congruence when sucient RPOs exist. Two examples | a simpli ed form of action calculi and term-rewriting | are given, for which it is shown that su- cient RPOs indeed exist. The thrust of thi...

The dynamics of many calculi can be most clearly defined by a reduction semantics. To work with a calculus, however, an understanding of operational congruences is fundamental; these can often be given tractable definitions or characterisations using a labelled transition semantics. This paper considers calculi with arbitrary reduction semantics of three simple classes, firstly ground term rewriting, then left-linear term rewriting, and then a class which is essentially the action calculi lacking substantive name binding. General definitions of labelled transitions are given in each case, uniformly in the set of rewrite rules, and without requiring the prescription of additional notions of observation. They give rise to bisimulation congruences. As a test of the theory it is shown that bisimulation for a fragment of CCS is recovered. The transitions generated for a fragment of the Ambient Calculus of Cardelli and Gordon, and for SKI combinators, are also discussed briefly.

We review the origins of structural operational semantics. The main publication ‘A Structural Approach to Operational Semantics, ’ also known as the ‘Aarhus Notes, ’ appeared in 1981 [G.D. Plotkin, A structural approach to operational semantics, DAIMI FN-19, Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, 1981]. The development of the ideas dates back to the early 1970s, involving many people and building on previous work on programming languages and logic. The former included abstract syntax, the SECD machine, and the abstract interpreting machines of the Vienna school; the latter included the λ-calculus and formal systems. The initial development of structural operational semantics was for simple functional languages, more or less variations of the λ-calculus; after that the ideas were gradually extended to include languages with parallel features, such as Milner’s CCS. This experience set the ground for a more systematic exposition, the subject of an invited course of lectures at Aarhus University; some of these appeared in print as the 1981 Notes. We discuss the content of these lectures and some related considerations such as ‘small state’ versus ‘grand state, ’ structural versus compositional semantics, the influence of the Scott–Strachey approach to denotational semantics, the treatment of recursion and jumps, and static semantics. We next discuss relations with other work and some immediate further development. We conclude with an account of an old, previously unpublished, idea: an alternative, perhaps more readable, graphical presentation of systems of rules for operational semantics.

Modular SOS (MSOS) is a variant of conventional Structural Operational Semantics (SOS). Using MSOS, the transition rules for each construct of a programming language can be given incrementally, once and for all, and do not need reformulation when further constructs are added to the language. MSOS thus provides an exceptionally high degree of modularity in language descriptions, removing a shortcoming of the original SOS framework. After sketching the background and reviewing the main features of SOS, the paper explains the crucial differences between SOS and MSOS, and illustrates how MSOS descriptions are written. It also discusses standard notions of semantic equivalence based on MSOS. Appendix A shows how the illustrative MSOS rules given in the paper would be formulated in conventional SOS.

In this dissertation we investigate presheaf models for concurrent computation. Our aim is to provide a systematic treatment of bisimulation for a wide range of concurrent process calculi. Bisimilarity is defined abstractly in terms of open maps as in the work of Joyal, Nielsen and Winskel. Their work inspired this thesis by suggesting that presheaf categories could provide abstract models for concurrency with a built-in notion of bisimulation. We show how

This document consists of a slightly revised and corrected version of a dissertation

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We present a logic for algebraic effects, based on the algebraic representation of computational effects by operations and equations. We begin with the a-calculus, a minimal calculus which separates values, effects, and computations and thereby canonises the order of evaluation. This is extended to obtain the logic, which is a classical firstorder multi-sorted logic with higher-order value and computation types, as in Levy’s call-by-push-value, a principle of induction over computations, a free algebra principle, and predicate fixed points. This logic embraces Moggi’s computational λ-calculus, and also, via definable modalities, Hennessy-Milner logic, and evaluation logic, though Hoare logic presents difficulties. 1