Rule-based semantics for an extended lambda-calculus

1Citations
Citations of this article
2Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.
Get full text

Abstract

Many implementation techniques proposed for functional languages in the literature are based on lambda-calculus and the theory of combinators [5, 12, 14]. The main advantage of functional languages over the more conventional programming languages is their lack of side-effects which makes their semantics much simpler [2]. This paper presents a λ-calculus dialect with list-handling extensions that can be used for defining an operational semantics for functional programs. This semantics is based on a set of elementary α-rules and β-rules which collectively implement the substitution operation without explicitly using it [10]. Two extra reduction rules, called γ-rules, have been added to the system for list manipulations [11]. Combining λ-calculus with list-handling capabilities makes an efficient vectorization of λ-calculus possible. This way we obtain a very elegant treatment of mutual recursion in our system. The reduction rules described in this paper represent, in fact, an operational semantics for our extended λ-notation. An interpreter program for this extended λ-calculus has been developed by a direct implementation of the reduction rules which makes the correctness proof of the interpreter very easy. The notion of controlled reduction is introduced here to guarantee the existence of a normal form for λ-expressions representing recursively defined functions using the Y combinator.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Révész, G. E. (1988). Rule-based semantics for an extended lambda-calculus. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 298 LNCS, pp. 43–56). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-19020-1_3

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free