Distilling Abstract Machines (Long Version)

It is well-known that many environment-based abstract machines can be seen as strategies in lambda calculi with explicit substitutions (ES). Recently, graphical syntaxes and linear logic led to the linear substitution calculus (LSC), a new approach to ES that is halfway between big-step calculi and traditional calculi with ES. This paper studies the relationship between the LSC and environment-based abstract machines. While traditional calculi with ES simulate abstract machines, the LSC rather distills them: some transitions are simulated while others vanish, as they map to a notion of structural congruence. The distillation process unveils that abstract machines in fact implement weak linear head reduction, a notion of evaluation having a central role in the theory of linear logic. We show that such a pattern applies uniformly in call-by-name, call-by-value, and call-by-need, catching many machines in the literature. We start by distilling the KAM, the CEK, and the ZINC, and then provide simplified versions of the SECD, the lazy KAM, and Sestoft's machine. Along the way we also introduce some new machines with global environments. Moreover, we show that distillation preserves the time complexity of the executions, i.e. the LSC is a complexity-preserving abstraction of abstract machines.Comment: 63 page

A Theory of Explicit Substitutions with Safe and Full Composition

Many different systems with explicit substitutions have been proposed to implement a large class of higher-order languages. Motivations and challenges that guided the development of such calculi in functional frameworks are surveyed in the first part of this paper. Then, very simple technology in named variable-style notation is used to establish a theory of explicit substitutions for the lambda-calculus which enjoys a whole set of useful properties such as full composition, simulation of one-step beta-reduction, preservation of beta-strong normalisation, strong normalisation of typed terms and confluence on metaterms. Normalisation of related calculi is also discussed.Comment: 29 pages Special Issue: Selected Papers of the Conference "International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming 2008" edited by Giuseppe Castagna and Igor Walukiewic

Call-by-Value solvability, revisited

International audienceIn the call-by-value lambda-calculus solvable terms have been characterised by means of call-by-name reductions, which is disappointing and requires complex reasonings. We introduce the value substitution lambda-calculus, a simple calculus borrowing ideas from Herbelin and Zimmerman's call-by-value lambda-CBV calculus and from Accattoli and Kesner's substitution calculus lambda-sub. In this new setting, we characterise solvable terms as those terms having normal form with respect to a suitable restriction of the rewriting relation

Dual-Context Calculi for Modal Logic

We present natural deduction systems and associated modal lambda calculi for the necessity fragments of the normal modal logics K, T, K4, GL and S4. These systems are in the dual-context style: they feature two distinct zones of assumptions, one of which can be thought as modal, and the other as intuitionistic. We show that these calculi have their roots in in sequent calculi. We then investigate their metatheory, equip them with a confluent and strongly normalizing notion of reduction, and show that they coincide with the usual Hilbert systems up to provability. Finally, we investigate a categorical semantics which interprets the modality as a product-preserving functor.Comment: Full version of article previously presented at LICS 2017 (see arXiv:1602.04860v4 or doi: 10.1109/LICS.2017.8005089

An Abstract Factorization Theorem for Explicit Substitutions

We study a simple form of standardization, here called factorization, for explicit substitutions calculi, i.e. lambda-calculi where beta-reduction is decomposed in various rules. These calculi, despite being non-terminating and non-orthogonal, have a key feature: each rule terminates when considered separately. It is well-known that the study of rewriting properties simplifies in presence of termination (e.g. confluence reduces to local confluence). This remark is exploited to develop an abstract theorem deducing factorization from some axioms on local diagrams. The axioms are simple and easy to check, in particular they do not mention residuals. The abstract theorem is then applied to some explicit substitution calculi related to Proof-Nets. We show how to recover standardization by levels, we model both call-by-name and call-by-value calculi and we characterize linear head reduction via a factorization theorem for a linear calculus of substitutions

Metaconfluence of Calculi with Explicit Substitutions at a Distance

Confluence is a key property of rewriting calculi that guarantees uniqueness of normal-forms when they exist. Metaconfluence is even more general, and guarantees confluence on open/meta terms, i.e. terms with holes, called metavariables that can be filled up with other (open/meta) terms. The difficulty to deal with open terms comes from the fact that the structure of metaterms is only partially known, so that some reduction rules became blocked by the metavariables. In this work, we establish metaconfluence for a family of calculi with explicit substitutions (ES) that enjoy preservation of strong-normalization (PSN) and that act at a distance. For that, we first extend the notion of reduction on metaterms in such a way that explicit substitutions are never structurally moved, i.e. they also act at a distance on metaterms. The resulting reduction relations are still rewriting systems, i.e. they do not include equational axioms, thus providing for the first time an interesting family of lambda-calculi with explicit substitutions that enjoy both PSN and metaconfluence without requiring sophisticated notions of reduction modulo a set of equations

A Lambda Term Representation Inspired by Linear Ordered Logic

We introduce a new nameless representation of lambda terms inspired by ordered logic. At a lambda abstraction, number and relative position of all occurrences of the bound variable are stored, and application carries the additional information where to cut the variable context into function and argument part. This way, complete information about free variable occurrence is available at each subterm without requiring a traversal, and environments can be kept exact such that they only assign values to variables that actually occur in the associated term. Our approach avoids space leaks in interpreters that build function closures. In this article, we prove correctness of the new representation and present an experimental evaluation of its performance in a proof checker for the Edinburgh Logical Framework. Keywords: representation of binders, explicit substitutions, ordered contexts, space leaks, Logical Framework.Comment: In Proceedings LFMTP 2011, arXiv:1110.668