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The adequacy of Launchbury's natural semantics for lazy evaluation*

Part of:JFP Research Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2018

JOACHIM BREITNER
JOACHIM BREITNER*
Affiliation:
Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA-19146, USA (e-mail: joachim@cis.upenn.edu)
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Abstract

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In his seminal paper “A Natural Semantics for Lazy Evaluation”, John Launchbury proves his semantics correct with respect to a denotational semantics, and outlines a proof of adequacy. Previous attempts to rigorize the adequacy proof, which involves an intermediate natural semantics and an intermediate resourced denotational semantics, have failed. We devised a new, direct proof that skips the intermediate natural semantics. It is the first rigorous adequacy proof of Launchbury's semantics. We have modeled our semantics in the interactive theorem prover Isabelle and machine-checked our proofs. This does not only provide a maximum level of rigor, but also serves as a tool for further work, such as a machine-checked correctness proof of a compiler transformation.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 28 , 2018, e1
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Footnotes

*

This work was carried out while the author was a member of the Programming Paradigms Group of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. The author was supported by the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung.

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