Canonical solutions of domain equations are shown to be final coalgebras, not only in a category of non-standard sets (as already known), but also in categories of metric spaces and partial orders. Coalgebras are simple categorical structures generalizing the notion of post-fixed point. They are also used here for giving a new comprehensive presentation of the (still) non-standard theory of non-well-founded sets (as non-standard sets are usually called). This paper is meant to provide a basis to a more general project aiming at a full exploitation of the finality of the domains in the semantics of programming languages --- concurrent ones among them. Such a final semantics enjoys uniformity and generality. For instance, semantic observational equivalences like bisimulation can be derived as instances of a single `coalgebraic' definition (introduced elsewhere), which is parametric of the functor appearing in the domain equation. Some properties of this general form of equivalence are also studied in this paper.

Techniques for reasoning about extensional properties of functional programs are well understood, but methods for analysing the underlying intensional or operational properties have been much neglected. This paper begins with the development of a simple but useful calculus for time analysis of non-strict functional programs with lazy lists. One limitation of this basic calculus is that the ordinary equational reasoning on functional programs is not valid. In order to buy back some of these equational properties we develop a non-standard operational equivalence relation called cost equivalence, by considering the number of computation steps as an `observable' component of the evaluation process. We define this relation by analogy with Park's definition of bisimulation in CCS. This formulation allows us to show that cost equivalence is a contextual congruence (and thus is substitutive with respect to the basic calculus) and provides useful proof techniques for establishing cost-equivalen...

Abstract. We propose a novel, comonadic approach to dataflow (streambased) computation. This is based on the observation that both general and causal stream functions can be characterized as coKleisli arrows of comonads and on the intuition that comonads in general must be a good means to structure context-dependent computation. In particular, we develop a generic comonadic interpreter of languages for context-dependent computation and instantiate it for stream-based computation. We also discuss distributive laws of a comonad over a monad as a means to structure combinations of effectful and context-dependent computation. We apply the latter to analyse clocked dataflow (partial stream based) computation. 1

Comonads are mathematical structures that account naturally for effects that derive from the context in which a program is executed. This paper reports ongoing work on the interaction between recursion and comonads. Two applications are shown that naturally lead to versions of a comonadic fold operator on the product comonad. Both versions capture functions that require extra arguments for their computation and are related with the notion of strong datatype. 1 Introduction One of the main features of recursive operators derivable from datatype definitions is that they impose a structure upon programs which can be exploited for program transformation. Recursive operators structure functional programs according to the data structures they traverse or generate and come equipped with a battery of algebraic laws, also derivable from type definitions, which are used in program calculations [24, 11, 5, 15]. Some of these laws, the so-called fusion laws, are particularly interesting in p...

We call language L 1 intensionally more expressive than L 2 if there are functions which can be computed faster in L 1 than in L 2 . We study the intensional expressiveness of several languages: the Berry-Curien programming language of sequential algorithms, CDS0, a deterministic parallel extension to it, named CDSP, and various parallel extensions to the functional programming language PCF. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we show that CDS0 can compute the minimum of two numbers n and p in unary representation in time O(min(n; p)). However, it cannot compute a "natural" version of this function. CDSP allows us to compute this function, as well as functions like parallel-or. This work can be seen as an extension of the work of Colson [7, 8] with primitive recursive algorithms to the setting of sequential algorithms. In the second part, we show that deterministic parallelism adds intensional expressiveness, settling a "folk" conjecture from the literature in the nega...

It is well known that type constructors of incomplete trees (trees with variables) carry the structure of a monad with substitution as the extension operation. Less known are the facts that the same is true of type constructors of incomplete cotrees (=non-wellfounded trees) and that the corresponding monads exhibit a special structure. We wish to draw attention to the dual facts which are as meaningful for functional programming: type constructors of decorated cotrees carry the structure of a comonad with redecoration as the coextension operation, and so do---even more interestingly---type constructors of decorated trees.

We give a systematic treatment of distributivity for a monad and a comonad as arises in incorporating category theoretic accounts of operational and denotational semantics, and in giving an intensional denotational semantics. We do this axiomatically, in terms of a monad and a comonad in a 2-category, giving accounts of the Eilenberg-Moore and Kleisli constructions. We analyse the eight possible relationships, deducing that two pairs are isomorphic, but that the other pairs are all distinct. We develop those 2-categorical definitions necessary to support this analysis. 1 Introduction In recent years, there has been an ongoing attempt to incorporate operational semantics into a category theoretic treatment of denotational semantics. The denotational semantics is given by starting with a signature 6 for a language without variable binding, and considering the category 6-Alg of 6-algebras [4]. The programs of the language form the initial 6-algebra. For operational semantics, one starts ...

Abstract: We propose a novel discipline for programming stream functions and for the semantic description of stream manipulation languages based on the observation that both general and causal stream functions can be characterized as coKleisli arrows of comonads. This seems to be a promising application for the old, but very little exploited idea that if monads abstract notions of computation of a value, comonads ought to be useable as an abstraction of notions of value in a context. We also show that causal partial-stream functions can be described in terms of a combination of a comonad and a monad.

We present a framework for designing parallel programming languages whose semantics is functional and where communications are explicit. To this end, we specialize Brookes and Geva's generalized concrete data structures with a notion of explicit data layout and obtain a CCC of distributed structures called arrays. We find that arrays' symmetric replicated structures, suggested by the data-parallel SPMD paradigm, are incompatible with sum types. We then outline a functional language with explicitly-distributed (monomorphic) concrete types, including higher-order, sum and recursive ones. In this language, programs can be as large as the network and can observe communication events in other programs. Such flexibility is missing from current data-parallel languages and amounts to a fusion with their so-called annotations, directives or meta-languages. 1 Explicit communications and functional programming Faced with the mismatch between parallel programming languages and the requirements o...

This paper describes calculational properties of fold, a recursive functional on inductive types that extends the standard catamorphism [MFP91] to global parameters. As described by Cockett and Spencer [CS91] fold is definable for those inductive types that are strong in the sense of being given by an algebra that happens to be initial with parameters. The laws for fold are presented in two groups. The first one corresponds to standard laws for catamorphisms now adapted to folds when these are regarded as catamorphisms in a category of so-called X-actions (for X an object of parameters). The second group contains laws that describe the combination of folds and the interaction between folds and catamorphisms. 1 Introduction In programming semantics, a recursive type is understood as a solution of a recursive type equation. Least fixpoints of covariant recursive type equations correspond to the so-called inductive types which contain only finite elements, like natural numbers, lists o...