Formalizing Implementation Strategies for First-Class Continuations

We present the first formalization of implementation strategies for first-class continuations. The formalization hinges on abstractmachines for continuation-passing style (CPS) programs with a specialtreatment for the current continuation, accounting for the essence offirst-class continuations. These abstract machines are proven equivalentto a standard, substitution-based abstract machine. The proof techniqueswork uniformly for various representations of continuations. As a byproduct, we also present a formal proof of the two folklore theorems that onecontinuation identifier is enough for second-class continuations and thatsecond-class continuations are stackable.A large body of work exists on implementing continuations, but it is predominantly empirical and implementation-oriented. In contrast, our formalization abstracts the essence of first-class continuations and providesa uniform setting for specifying and formalizing their representation

Scheme 2003: proceedings of the fourth workshop on scheme and functional programming

technical reportThis report contains the papers presented at the Fourth Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming. The purpose of the Scheme Workshop is to discuss experience with and future developments of the Scheme programming language?including the future of Scheme standardization?as well as general aspects of computer science loosely centered on the general theme of Scheme