On the Semantic Expressiveness of Iso- and Equi-Recursive Types
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866929596500279296 |
|---|---|
| author | Devriese, Dominique Martin, Eric Mark Patrignani, Marco |
| author_facet | Devriese, Dominique Martin, Eric Mark Patrignani, Marco |
| contents | Recursive types extend the simply-typed lambda calculus (STLC) with the additional expressive power to enable diverging computation and to encode recursive data-types (e.g., lists). Two formulations of recursive types exist: iso-recursive and equi-recursive. The relative advantages of iso- and equi-recursion are well-studied when it comes to their impact on type-inference. However, the relative semantic expressiveness of the two formulations remains unclear so far. This paper studies the semantic expressiveness of STLC with iso- and equi-recursive types, proving that these formulations are equally expressive. In fact, we prove that they are both as expressive as STLC with only term-level recursion. We phrase these equi-expressiveness results in terms of full abstraction of three canonical compilers between these three languages (STLC with iso-, with equi-recursive types and with term-level recursion). Our choice of languages allows us to study expressiveness when interacting over both a simply-typed and a recursively-typed interface. The three proofs all rely on a typed version of a proof technique called approximate backtranslation. Together, our results show that there is no difference in semantic expressiveness between STLCs with iso- and equi-recursive types. In this paper, we focus on a simply-typed setting but we believe our results scale to more powerful type systems like System F. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2010_10859 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | On the Semantic Expressiveness of Iso- and Equi-Recursive Types Devriese, Dominique Martin, Eric Mark Patrignani, Marco Programming Languages Recursive types extend the simply-typed lambda calculus (STLC) with the additional expressive power to enable diverging computation and to encode recursive data-types (e.g., lists). Two formulations of recursive types exist: iso-recursive and equi-recursive. The relative advantages of iso- and equi-recursion are well-studied when it comes to their impact on type-inference. However, the relative semantic expressiveness of the two formulations remains unclear so far. This paper studies the semantic expressiveness of STLC with iso- and equi-recursive types, proving that these formulations are equally expressive. In fact, we prove that they are both as expressive as STLC with only term-level recursion. We phrase these equi-expressiveness results in terms of full abstraction of three canonical compilers between these three languages (STLC with iso-, with equi-recursive types and with term-level recursion). Our choice of languages allows us to study expressiveness when interacting over both a simply-typed and a recursively-typed interface. The three proofs all rely on a typed version of a proof technique called approximate backtranslation. Together, our results show that there is no difference in semantic expressiveness between STLCs with iso- and equi-recursive types. In this paper, we focus on a simply-typed setting but we believe our results scale to more powerful type systems like System F. |
| title | On the Semantic Expressiveness of Iso- and Equi-Recursive Types |
| topic | Programming Languages |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10859 |