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Lazy evaluation is a powerful tool that enables better compositionality and potentially better performance in functional programming, but it is challenging to analyze its computation cost. Existing works either require manually annotating sharing, or rely on separation logic to reason about heaps of mutable cells. In this paper, we propose a bidirectional demand semantics that allows for extrinsic reasoning about the computation cost of lazy programs without relying on special program logics. To show the effectiveness of our approach, we apply the demand semantics to a variety of case studies including insertion sort, selection sort, Okasaki's banker's queue, and the implicit queue. We formally prove that the banker's queue and the implicit queue are both amortized and persistent using the Rocq Prover (formerly known as Coq). We also propose the reverse physicist's method, a novel variant of the classical physicist's method, which enables mechanized, modular and compositional reasoning about amortization and persistence with the demand semantics.more » « less
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In type systems with dependency tracking, programmers can assign an ordered set of levels to computations and prevent information flow from high-level computations to the low-level ones. The key notion in such systems isindistinguishability: a definition of program equivalence that takes into account the parts of the program that an observer may depend on. In this paper, we investigate the use of dependency tracking in the context of dependently-typed languages. We present the Dependent Calculus of Indistinguishability (DCOI), a system that adopts indistinguishability as the definition of equality used by the type checker. DCOI also internalizes that relation as an observer-indexed propositional equality type, so that programmers may reason about indistinguishability within the language. Our design generalizes and extends prior systems that combine dependency tracking with dependent types and is the first to support conversion and propositional equality at arbitrary observer levels. We have proven type soundness and noninterference theorems for DCOI and have developed a prototype implementation of its type checker.more » « less
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In dependently-typed functional programming languages that allow general recursion, programs used as proofs must be evaluated to retain type soundness. As a result, programmers must make a trade-off between performance and safety. To address this problem, we propose System DE, an explicitly-typed, moded core calculus that supports termination tracking and equality reflection. Programmers can write inductive proofs about potentially diverging programs in a logical sublanguage and reflect those proofs to the type checker, while knowing that such proofs will be erased by the compiler before execution. A key feature of System DE is its use of modes for both termination and relevance tracking, which not only simplifies the design but also leaves it open for future extension. System DE is suitable for use in the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, but could serve as the basis for any general purpose dependently-typed language.more » « less
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Dependency analysis is vital to several applications in computer science. It lies at the essence of secure information flow analysis, binding-time analysis, etc. Various calculi have been proposed in the literature for analysing individual dependencies. Abadi et. al., by extending Moggi’s monadic metalanguage, unified several of these calculi into the Dependency Core Calculus (DCC). DCC has served as a foundational framework for dependency analysis for the last two decades. However, in spite of its success, DCC has its limitations. First, the monadic bind rule of the calculus is nonstandard and relies upon an auxiliary protection judgement. Second, being of a monadic nature, the calculus cannot capture dependency analyses that possess a comonadic nature, for example, the binding-time calculus, λ∘, of Davies. In this paper, we address these limitations by designing an alternative dependency calculus that is inspired by standard ideas from category theory. Our calculus is both monadic and comonadic in nature and subsumes both DCC and λ∘. Our construction explains the nonstandard bind rule and the protection judgement of DCC in terms of standard categorical concepts. It also leads to a novel technique for proving correctness of dependency analysis. We use this technique to present alternative proofs of correctness for DCC and λ∘.more » « less
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Free monads (and their variants) have become a popular general-purpose tool for representing the semantics of effectful programs in proof assistants. These data structures support the compositional definition of semantics parameterized by uninterpreted events, while admitting a rich equational theory of equivalence. But monads are not the only way to structure effectful computation, why should we limit ourselves? In this paper, inspired by applicative functors, selective functors, and other structures, we define a collection of data structures and theories, which we call program adverbs, that capture a variety of computational patterns. Program adverbs are themselves composable, allowing them to be used to specify the semantics of languages with multiple computation patterns. We use program adverbs as the basis for a new class of semantic embeddings called Tlön embeddings. Compared with embeddings based on free monads, Tlön embeddings allow more flexibility in computational modeling of effects, while retaining more information about the program's syntactic structure.more » « less
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Lazy evaluation is a powerful tool for functional programmers. It enables the concise expression of on-demand computation and a form of compositionality not available under other evaluation strategies. However, the stateful nature of lazy evaluation makes it hard to analyze a program's computational cost, either informally or formally. In this work, we present a novel and simple framework for formally reasoning about lazy computation costs based on a recent model of lazy evaluation: clairvoyant call-by-value. The key feature of our framework is its simplicity, as expressed by our definition of the clairvoyance monad. This monad is both simple to define (around 20 lines of Coq) and simple to reason about. We show that this monad can be effectively used to mechanically reason about the computational cost of lazy functional programs written in Coq.more » « less
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