Abstract
We formally prove the stackability and linearity of exception handlers with ML-style semantics using a novel proof technique via an ordered logical framework (OLF). We first transform exceptions into continuation-passing-style (CPS) terms and formalize the exception properties as a judgement on the CPS terms. Then, rather than directly proving that the properties hold for terms, we prove our theorem for the representations of the CPS terms and transform in OLF. We rely upon the correctness of our representations to transfer the results back to the actual CPS terms and transform.
Our work can be seen as two-fold: we present a theoretical justification of using the stack mechanism to implement exceptions of ML-like semantics; and we demonstrate the value of an ordered logical framework as a conceptual tool in the theoretical study of programming languages.
This work is supported by Creative Research Initiatives of the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology.
Research On Program Analysis System (http://ropas.kaist.ac.kr), National Creative Research Initiative Center, KAIST, Korea.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge insightful discussions with Peter O’Hearn and Frank Pfenning.
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Polakow, J., Yi, K. (2001). Proving Syntactic Properties of Exceptions in an Ordered Logical Framework. In: Kuchen, H., Ueda, K. (eds) Functional and Logic Programming. FLOPS 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2024. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44716-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44716-4_4
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