Fully Abstract Translations Between Functional Languages

We examine the problem of finding fully abstract translations between programming languages, i.e., translations that preserve code equivalence and nonequivalence. We present three examples of fully abstract translations: one from call-by-value to lazy PCF, one from call-by name to call-by-value PCF, and one from lazy to call-by-value PCF. The translations yield upper and lower bounds on decision procedures for proving equivalences of code. We finally define a notion of functional translation that captures the essence of the proofs of full abstraction, and show that some languages cannot be translated into others