17 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..
Inductive-data-type Systems
In a previous work ("Abstract Data Type Systems", TCS 173(2), 1997), the last
two authors presented a combined language made of a (strongly normalizing)
algebraic rewrite system and a typed lambda-calculus enriched by
pattern-matching definitions following a certain format, called the "General
Schema", which generalizes the usual recursor definitions for natural numbers
and similar "basic inductive types". This combined language was shown to be
strongly normalizing. The purpose of this paper is to reformulate and extend
the General Schema in order to make it easily extensible, to capture a more
general class of inductive types, called "strictly positive", and to ease the
strong normalization proof of the resulting system. This result provides a
computation model for the combination of an algebraic specification language
based on abstract data types and of a strongly typed functional language with
strictly positive inductive types.Comment: Theoretical Computer Science (2002
The computability path ordering: the end of a quest
In this paper, we first briefly survey automated termination proof methods
for higher-order calculi. We then concentrate on the higher-order recursive
path ordering, for which we provide an improved definition, the Computability
Path Ordering. This new definition appears indeed to capture the essence of
computability arguments \`a la Tait and Girard, therefore explaining the name
of the improved ordering.Comment: Dans CSL'08 (2008
A rationale for conditional equational programming
AbstractConditional equations provide a paradigm of computation that combines the clean syntax and semantics of LISP-like functional programming with Prolog-like logic programming in a uniform manner. For functional programming, equations are used as rules for left-to-right rewriting; for logic programming, the same rules are used for conditional narrowing. Together, rewriting and narrowing provide increased expressive power. We discuss some aspects of the theory of conditional rewriting, and the reasons underlying certain choices in designing a language based on them. The most important correctness property a conditional rewriting program may posses is ground confluence; this ensures that at most one value can be computed from any given (variable-free) input term. We give criteria for confluence. Reasonable conditions for ensuring the completeness of narrowing as an operational mechanism for solving goals are provided; these results are then extended to handle rewriting with existentially quantified conditions and built-in predicates. Some termination issues are also considered, including the case of rewriting with higher-order terms
On the confluence of lambda-calculus with conditional rewriting
The confluence of untyped \lambda-calculus with unconditional rewriting is
now well un- derstood. In this paper, we investigate the confluence of
\lambda-calculus with conditional rewriting and provide general results in two
directions. First, when conditional rules are algebraic. This extends results
of M\"uller and Dougherty for unconditional rewriting. Two cases are
considered, whether \beta-reduction is allowed or not in the evaluation of
conditions. Moreover, Dougherty's result is improved from the assumption of
strongly normalizing \beta-reduction to weakly normalizing \beta-reduction. We
also provide examples showing that outside these conditions, modularity of
confluence is difficult to achieve. Second, we go beyond the algebraic
framework and get new confluence results using a restricted notion of
orthogonality that takes advantage of the conditional part of rewrite rules
Polymorphic Rewriting Conserves Algebraic Strong Normalization
We study combinations of many-sorted algebraic term rewriting systems and polymorphic lambda term rewriting. Algebraic and lambda terms are mixed by adding the symbols of the algebraic signature to the polymorphic lambda calculus, as higher-order constants. We show that if a many-sorted algebraic rewrite system R is strongly normalizing (terminating, noetherian), then R + β + η + type-η rewriting of mixed terms is also strongly normalizing. The result is obtained using a technique which generalizes Girard\u27s candidats de reductibilité , introduced in the original proof of strong normalization for the polymorphic lambda calculus
Termination of rewrite relations on -terms based on Girard's notion of reducibility
In this paper, we show how to extend the notion of reducibility introduced by
Girard for proving the termination of -reduction in the polymorphic
-calculus, to prove the termination of various kinds of rewrite
relations on -terms, including rewriting modulo some equational theory
and rewriting with matching modulo , by using the notion of
computability closure. This provides a powerful termination criterion for
various higher-order rewriting frameworks, including Klop's Combinatory
Reductions Systems with simple types and Nipkow's Higher-order Rewrite Systems
Modular Termination for Second-Order Computation Rules and Application to Algebraic Effect Handlers
We present a new modular proof method of termination for second-order
computation, and report its implementation SOL. The proof method is useful for
proving termination of higher-order foundational calculi. To establish the
method, we use a variation of semantic labelling translation and Blanqui's
General Schema: a syntactic criterion of strong normalisation. As an
application, we apply this method to show termination of a variant of
call-by-push-value calculus with algebraic effects and effect handlers. We also
show that our tool SOL is effective to solve higher-order termination problems.Comment: 27 page