Coalgebras and Higher-Order Computation: a GoI Approach

Girard\u27s geometry of interaction (GoI) can be seen---in one practical aspect of it---as a compositional compilation method from functional programs to sequential machines. There tokens move around and express interactions between (parts of) programs. Intrigued by the combination of abstract structures and concrete dynamics in GoI, our line of work has aimed at exploiting, in GoI, results from the theory of coalgebra---a categorical abstraction of state-based transition systems that has found its use principally in concurrency theory. Such reinforced connection between higher-order computation and state-based dynamics is made possible thanks to an elegant categorical axiomatization of GoI by Abramsky, Haghverdi and Scott, where traced monoidal categories are identified to be the essential structure behind. In the talk I shall lay out these basic ideas, together with some of our results on: GoI semantics for a quantum programming language; and our ``memoryful\u27\u27 extension of GoI with algebraic effects. The talk is based on my joint work with my colleague Naohiko Hoshino (RIMS, Kyoto Univer- sity) and my (former) students Koko Muroya (University of Birmingham) and Toshiki Kataoka (University of Tokyo), to whom I owe special thanks

A generic operational metatheory for algebraic effects

We provide a syntactic analysis of contextual preorder and equivalence for a polymorphic programming language with effects. Our approach applies uniformly across a range of algebraic effects, and incorporates, as instances: errors, input/output, global state, nondeterminism, probabilistic choice, and combinations thereof. Our approach is to extend Plotkin and Power’s structural operational semantics for algebraic effects (FoSSaCS 2001) with a primitive “basic preorder” on ground type computation trees. The basic preorder is used to derive notions of contextual preorder and equivalence on program terms. Under mild assumptions on this relation, we prove fundamental properties of contextual preorder (hence equivalence) including extensionality properties and a characterisation via applicative contexts, and we provide machinery for reasoning about polymorphism using relational parametricity

An Effect System for Algebraic Effects and Handlers

We present an effect system for core Eff, a simplified variant of Eff, which is an ML-style programming language with first-class algebraic effects and handlers. We define an expressive effect system and prove safety of operational semantics with respect to it. Then we give a domain-theoretic denotational semantics of core Eff, using Pitts's theory of minimal invariant relations, and prove it adequate. We use this fact to develop tools for finding useful contextual equivalences, including an induction principle. To demonstrate their usefulness, we use these tools to derive the usual equations for mutable state, including a general commutativity law for computations using non-interfering references. We have formalized the effect system, the operational semantics, and the safety theorem in Twelf

Towards Modular Compilation Using Higher-Order Effects

Compilers transform a human readable source language into machine readable target language. Nanopass compilers simplify this approach by breaking up this transformation into small steps that are more understandable, maintainable, and extensible. We propose a semantics-driven variant of the nanopass compiler architecture exploring the use a effects and handlers to model the intermediate languages and the transformation passes, respectively. Our approach is fully typed and ensures that all cases in the compiler are covered. Additionally, by using an effect system we abstract over the control flow of the intermediate language making the compiler even more flexible. We apply this approach to a minimal compiler from a language with arithmetic and let-bound variables to a string of pretty printed X86 instructions. In the future, we hope to extend this work to compile a larger and more complicated language and we envision a formal verification framework from compilers written in this style