The aim of this paper is to present the s-calculus which is a very simple -calculus with explicit substitutions and to prove its confluence on closed terms and the preservation of strong normalisation of -terms. We shall prove strong normalisation of the corresponding calculus of substitution by translating it into the oe-calculus [ACCL91], and therefore the relation between both calculi will be made explicit. The confluence of the s-calculus is obtained by the "interpretation method" ([Har89], [CHL92]). The proof of the preservation of normalisation follows the lines of an analogous result for the AE-calculus (cf. [BBLRD95]). The relation between s and AE is also studied.

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To my parents A general abstract theory for computation involving shared resources is presented. We develop the models of sharing graphs, also known as term graphs, in terms of both syntax and semantics. According to the complexity of the permitted form of sharing, we consider four situations of sharing graphs. The simplest is first-order acyclic sharing graphs represented by let-syntax, and others are extensions with higher-order constructs (lambda calculi) and/or cyclic sharing (recursive letrec binding). For each of four settings, we provide the equational theory for representing the sharing graphs, and identify the class of categorical models which are shown to be sound and complete for the theory. The emphasis is put on the algebraic nature of sharing graphs, which leads us to the semantic account of them. We describe the models in terms of the notions of symmetric monoidal categories and functors, additionally with symmetric monoidal adjunctions and traced

We address the problem of dependency analysis and caching in the context of the -calculus. The dependencies of a - term are (roughly) the parts of the -term that contribute to the result of evaluating it. We introduce a mechanism for keeping track of dependencies, and discuss how to use these dependencies in caching.

A general formulation of inductive and recursive definitions in Martin-Lof's type theory is presented. It extends Backhouse's `Do-It-Yourself Type Theory' to include inductive definitions of families of sets and definitions of functions by recursion on the way elements of such sets are generated. The formulation is in natural deduction and is intended to be a natural generalization to type theory of Martin-Lof's theory of iterated inductive definitions in predicate logic. Formal criteria are given for correct formation and introduction rules of a new set former capturing definition by strictly positive, iterated, generalized induction. Moreover, there is an inversion principle for deriving elimination and equality rules from the formation and introduction rules. Finally, there is an alternative schematic presentation of definition by recursion. The resulting theory is a flexible and powerful language for programming and constructive mathematics. We hint at the wealth of possible applic...

Recent advances in compiler technology have demonstrated the benefits of using strongly typed intermediate languages to compile richly typed source languages (e.g., ML). A typepreserving compiler can use types to guide advanced optimizations and to help generate provably secure mobile code. Types, unfortunately, are very hard to represent and manipulate efficiently; a naive implementation can easily add exponential overhead to the compilation and execution of a program. This paper describes our experience with implementing the FLINT typed intermediate language in the SML/NJ production compiler. We observe that a type-preserving compiler will not scale to handle large types unless all of its type-preserving stages preserve the asymptotic time and space usage in representing and manipulating types. We present a series of novel techniques for achieving this property and give empirical evidence of their effectiveness.

In this paper we introduce and study a new lambda-calculus with explicit substitution, lambda-xgc, which has two distinguishing features: first, it retains the use of traditional variable names, specifying terms modulo renaming; this simplifies the reduction system. Second, it includes reduction rules for explicit garbage collection; this simplifies several proofs. We show that lambda-xgc is a conservative extension which preserves strong normalisation (PSN) of the untyped lambda-calculus. The result is obtained in a modular way by first proving it for garbage-free reduction and then extending to `reductions in garbage'. This provides insight into the counterexample to PSN for lambda-sigma of Melliès (1995); we exploit the abstract nature of lambda-xgc to show how PSN is in conflict with any reasonable substitution composition rule (except for trivial composition rules of which we mention one). Key words: lambda calculus, explicit substitution, strong normalisation, garbage collection.

This paper presents a logical framework derived from the Edinburgh Logical Framework (LF) [5] that can be used to obtain compact representations of proofs and efficient proof checkers. These are essential ingredients of any application that manipulates proofs as first-class objects, such as a Proof-Carrying Code [11] system, in which proofs are used to allow the easy validation of properties of safety-critical or untrusted code. Our framework, which we call LF i , inherits from LF the capability to encode various logics in a natural way. In addition, the LF i framework allows proof representations without the high degree of redundancy that is characteristic of LF representations. The missing parts of LF i proof representations can be reconstructed during proof checking by an efficient reconstruction algorithm. We also describe an algorithm that can be used to strip the unnecessary parts of an LF representation of a proof. The experimental data that we gathered in the context of a Proof...

In [6] we have proposed a general higher-order unification method using a theory of explicit substitutions and we have proved its completeness. In this paper, we investigate the case of higher-order patterns as introduced by Miller. We show that our general algorithm specializes in a very convenient way to patterns. We also sketch an efficient implementation of the abstract algorithm and its generalization to constraint simplification, which has yielded good experimental results at the core of a higher-order constraint logic programming language.