4,004 research outputs found
Logical relations for coherence of effect subtyping
A coercion semantics of a programming language with subtyping is typically
defined on typing derivations rather than on typing judgments. To avoid
semantic ambiguity, such a semantics is expected to be coherent, i.e.,
independent of the typing derivation for a given typing judgment. In this
article we present heterogeneous, biorthogonal, step-indexed logical relations
for establishing the coherence of coercion semantics of programming languages
with subtyping. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proof method, we develop
a proof of coherence of a type-directed, selective CPS translation from a typed
call-by-value lambda calculus with delimited continuations and control-effect
subtyping. The article is accompanied by a Coq formalization that relies on a
novel shallow embedding of a logic for reasoning about step-indexing
Programming with Algebraic Effects and Handlers
Eff is a programming language based on the algebraic approach to
computational effects, in which effects are viewed as algebraic operations and
effect handlers as homomorphisms from free algebras. Eff supports first-class
effects and handlers through which we may easily define new computational
effects, seamlessly combine existing ones, and handle them in novel ways. We
give a denotational semantics of eff and discuss a prototype implementation
based on it. Through examples we demonstrate how the standard effects are
treated in eff, and how eff supports programming techniques that use various
forms of delimited continuations, such as backtracking, breadth-first search,
selection functionals, cooperative multi-threading, and others
Delimited continuations for Prolog
Delimited continuations are a famous control primitive that originates in the functional programming world. It allows the programmer to suspend and capture the remaining part of a computation in order to resume it later. We put a new Prolog-compatible face on this primitive and specify its semantics by means of a meta-interpreter. Moreover, we establish the power of delimited continuations in Prolog with several example definitions of high-level language features. Finally, we show how to easily and effectively add delimited continuations support to the WAM
A Rational Deconstruction of Landin's SECD Machine with the J Operator
Landin's SECD machine was the first abstract machine for applicative
expressions, i.e., functional programs. Landin's J operator was the first
control operator for functional languages, and was specified by an extension of
the SECD machine. We present a family of evaluation functions corresponding to
this extension of the SECD machine, using a series of elementary
transformations (transformation into continu-ation-passing style (CPS) and
defunctionalization, chiefly) and their left inverses (transformation into
direct style and refunctionalization). To this end, we modernize the SECD
machine into a bisimilar one that operates in lockstep with the original one
but that (1) does not use a data stack and (2) uses the caller-save rather than
the callee-save convention for environments. We also identify that the dump
component of the SECD machine is managed in a callee-save way. The caller-save
counterpart of the modernized SECD machine precisely corresponds to Thielecke's
double-barrelled continuations and to Felleisen's encoding of J in terms of
call/cc. We then variously characterize the J operator in terms of CPS and in
terms of delimited-control operators in the CPS hierarchy. As a byproduct, we
also present several reduction semantics for applicative expressions with the J
operator, based on Curien's original calculus of explicit substitutions. These
reduction semantics mechanically correspond to the modernized versions of the
SECD machine and to the best of our knowledge, they provide the first syntactic
theories of applicative expressions with the J operator
Continuation-Passing C: compiling threads to events through continuations
In this paper, we introduce Continuation Passing C (CPC), a programming
language for concurrent systems in which native and cooperative threads are
unified and presented to the programmer as a single abstraction. The CPC
compiler uses a compilation technique, based on the CPS transform, that yields
efficient code and an extremely lightweight representation for contexts. We
provide a proof of the correctness of our compilation scheme. We show in
particular that lambda-lifting, a common compilation technique for functional
languages, is also correct in an imperative language like C, under some
conditions enforced by the CPC compiler. The current CPC compiler is mature
enough to write substantial programs such as Hekate, a highly concurrent
BitTorrent seeder. Our benchmark results show that CPC is as efficient, while
using significantly less space, as the most efficient thread libraries
available.Comment: Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation (2012). arXiv admin note:
substantial text overlap with arXiv:1202.324
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