1,104 research outputs found
Higher-Order Termination: from Kruskal to Computability
Termination is a major question in both logic and computer science. In logic,
termination is at the heart of proof theory where it is usually called strong
normalization (of cut elimination). In computer science, termination has always
been an important issue for showing programs correct. In the early days of
logic, strong normalization was usually shown by assigning ordinals to
expressions in such a way that eliminating a cut would yield an expression with
a smaller ordinal. In the early days of verification, computer scientists used
similar ideas, interpreting the arguments of a program call by a natural
number, such as their size. Showing the size of the arguments to decrease for
each recursive call gives a termination proof of the program, which is however
rather weak since it can only yield quite small ordinals. In the sixties, Tait
invented a new method for showing cut elimination of natural deduction, based
on a predicate over the set of terms, such that the membership of an expression
to the predicate implied the strong normalization property for that expression.
The predicate being defined by induction on types, or even as a fixpoint, this
method could yield much larger ordinals. Later generalized by Girard under the
name of reducibility or computability candidates, it showed very effective in
proving the strong normalization property of typed lambda-calculi..
Confluence of Layered Rewrite Systems
We investigate a new, Turing-complete class of layered systems, whose linearized lefthand sides of rules can only be overlapped at the root position. Layered systems define a natural notion of rank for terms: the maximal number of redexes along a path from the root to a leaf. Overlappings are allowed in finite or infinite trees. Rules may be non-terminating, non-left-linear, or non-right- linear. Using a novel unification technique, cyclic unification, we show that rank non-increasing layered systems are confluent provided their cyclic critical pairs have cyclic-joinable decreasing diagrams
Light Logics and the Call-by-Value Lambda Calculus
The so-called light logics have been introduced as logical systems enjoying
quite remarkable normalization properties. Designing a type assignment system
for pure lambda calculus from these logics, however, is problematic. In this
paper we show that shifting from usual call-by-name to call-by-value lambda
calculus allows regaining strong connections with the underlying logic. This
will be done in the context of Elementary Affine Logic (EAL), designing a type
system in natural deduction style assigning EAL formulae to lambda terms.Comment: 28 page
Linear-algebraic lambda-calculus
With a view towards models of quantum computation and/or the interpretation
of linear logic, we define a functional language where all functions are linear
operators by construction. A small step operational semantic (and hence an
interpreter/simulator) is provided for this language in the form of a term
rewrite system. The linear-algebraic lambda-calculus hereby constructed is
linear in a different (yet related) sense to that, say, of the linear
lambda-calculus. These various notions of linearity are discussed in the
context of quantum programming languages. KEYWORDS: quantum lambda-calculus,
linear lambda-calculus, -calculus, quantum logics.Comment: LaTeX, 23 pages, 10 figures and the LINEAL language
interpreter/simulator file (see "other formats"). See the more recent
arXiv:quant-ph/061219
Optimality in Goal-Dependent Analysis of Sharing
We face the problems of correctness, optimality and precision for the static
analysis of logic programs, using the theory of abstract interpretation. We
propose a framework with a denotational, goal-dependent semantics equipped with
two unification operators for forward unification (calling a procedure) and
backward unification (returning from a procedure). The latter is implemented
through a matching operation. Our proposal clarifies and unifies many different
frameworks and ideas on static analysis of logic programming in a single,
formal setting. On the abstract side, we focus on the domain Sharing by Jacobs
and Langen and provide the best correct approximation of all the primitive
semantic operators, namely, projection, renaming, forward and backward
unification. We show that the abstract unification operators are strictly more
precise than those in the literature defined over the same abstract domain. In
some cases, our operators are more precise than those developed for more
complex domains involving linearity and freeness.
To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP
Computing overlappings by unification in the deterministic lambda calculus LR with letrec, case, constructors, seq and variable chains
Correctness of program transformations in extended lambda calculi with a contextual semantics is usually based on reasoning about the operational semantics which is a rewrite semantics. A successful approach to proving correctness is the combination of a context lemma with the computation of overlaps between program transformations and the reduction rules.The method is similar to the computation of critical pairs for the completion of term rewriting systems. We describe an effective unification algorithm to determine all overlaps of transformations with reduction rules for the lambda calculus LR which comprises a recursive let-expressions, constructor applications, case expressions and a seq construct for strict evaluation. The unification algorithm employs many-sorted terms, the equational theory of left-commutativity modeling multi-sets, context variables of different kinds and a mechanism for compactly representing binding chains in recursive let-expressions. As a result the algorithm computes a finite set of overlappings for the reduction rules of the calculus LR that serve as a starting point to the automatization of the analysis of program transformations
- …