Reversible flowchart languages and the structured reversible program theorem

Abstract

Many irreversible computation models have reversible counterparts, but these are poorly understood at present. We introduce reversible flowcharts with an assertion operator and show that any reversible flowchart can be simulated by a structured reversible flowchart using only three control flow operators. Reversible flowcharts are r- Turing-complete, meaning that they can simuluate reversible Turing machines without garbage data. We also demonstrate the injectivization of classical flowcharts into reversible flowcharts. The reversible flowchart computation model provides a theoretical justification for low-level machine code for reversible microprocessors as well as high-level block-structured reversible languages. We give examples for both such languages and illustrate them with a lossless encoder for permutations given by Dijkstra. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.