Abstract

Introduction In the mid 1960s, Landin observed that a complex programming language can be understood in terms of a tiny "core language" capturing the essential mechanisms of some programming, style together with a collection of convenient "derived forms" whose behavior is understood by translating them into the core (cf. [ Tennent, 1981 ] ). Landin's core language was the lambdacalculus, a formal system in which all computation is reduced to the basic operations of function definition and application. Since the 60s, the lambda-calculus has seen widespread use in the specification of programming language features, language design and implementation, and the study of type systems. Its importance arises from the fact that it can be viewed simultaneously as a simple programming language in which computations can be described and as a mathematical object about which rigorous statements can be proved. The lambda-calculus has a strong claim to be a<F28

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