Article

FreshML: programming with binders made simple

Authors:

Mark R. Shinwell,

Andrew M. Pitts,

Murdoch J. GabbayAuthors Info & Claims

ICFP '03: Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

Pages 263 - 274

https://doi.org/10.1145/944705.944729

Published: 25 August 2003 Publication History

Abstract

FreshML extends ML with elegant and practical constructs for declaring and manipulating syntactical data involving statically scoped binding operations. User-declared FreshML datatypes involving binders are concrete, in the sense that values of these types can be deconstructed by matching against patterns naming bound variables explicitly. This may have the computational effect of swapping bound names with freshly generated ones; previous work on FreshML used a complicated static type system inferring information about the 'freshness' of names for expressions in order to tame this effect. The main contribution of this paper is to show (perhaps surprisingly) that a standard type system without freshness inference, coupled with a conventional treatment of fresh name generation, suffices for FreshML's crucial correctness property that values of datatypes involving binders are operationally equivalent if and only if they represent a-equivalent pieces of object-level syntax. This is established via a novel denotational semantics. FreshML without static freshness inference is no more impure than ML and experience with it shows that it supports a programming style pleasingly close to informal practice when it comes to dealing with object-level syntax modulo a-equivalence.

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Cited By

Fiore MSzamozvancev D(2022)Formal metatheory of second-order abstract syntaxProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34987156:POPL(1-29)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498715
Ayala-Rincón Mde Carvalho-Segundo WFernández MNantes-Sobrinho DRocha-Oliveira A(2019)A formalisation of nominal α-equivalence with A, C, and AC function symbolsTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2019.02.020781:C(3-23)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.tcs.2019.02.020
Fairweather EFernández M(2018)Typed Nominal RewritingACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/316155819:1(1-46)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3161558
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Index Terms

FreshML: programming with binders made simple
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
      1. Syntax
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Data types and structures
        Patterns
      2. Language types
        Functional languages
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program semantics
      1. Denotational semantics
      2. Operational semantics

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICFP '03: Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

August 2003

310 pages

ISBN:1581137567

DOI:10.1145/944705

General Chair:
Colin Runciman
University of York, UK
,
Program Chair:
Olin Shivers
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 38, Issue 9
September 2003
289 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/944746
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2003 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 25 August 2003

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August 25 - 29, 2003

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ICFP '03 Paper Acceptance Rate 24 of 95 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 333 of 1,064 submissions, 31%

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Cited By

Fiore MSzamozvancev D(2022)Formal metatheory of second-order abstract syntaxProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34987156:POPL(1-29)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498715
Ayala-Rincón Mde Carvalho-Segundo WFernández MNantes-Sobrinho DRocha-Oliveira A(2019)A formalisation of nominal α-equivalence with A, C, and AC function symbolsTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2019.02.020781:C(3-23)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.tcs.2019.02.020
Fairweather EFernández M(2018)Typed Nominal RewritingACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/316155819:1(1-46)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3161558
Parreaux LVoizard AShaikhha AKoch C(2017)Unifying analytic and statically-typed quasiquotesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31581012:POPL(1-33)Online publication date: 27-Dec-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3158101
Pottier F(2017)Visitors unchainedProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31102721:ICFP(1-28)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3110272
SERRANO AHAGE J(2017)Constraint handling rules with binders, patterns and generic quantificationTheory and Practice of Logic Programming10.1017/S147106841700023017:5-6(992-1009)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2017
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1471068417000230
Ferreira FPientka B(2017)Programs Using Syntax with First-Class BindersProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-662-54434-1_19(504-529)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54434-1_19
Lorenzen FErdweg S(2016)Sound type-dependent syntactic language extensionACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2914770.283764451:1(204-216)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2914770.2837644
Pitts A(2016)Nominal techniquesACM SIGLOG News10.1145/2893582.28935943:1(57-72)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2893582.2893594
Lorenzen FErdweg SBodik RMajumdar R(2016)Sound type-dependent syntactic language extensionProceedings of the 43rd Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages10.1145/2837614.2837644(204-216)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2016
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