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Workshop/School/Symposium of the REX Project (Research and Education in Concurrent Systems)

REX 1992: Semantics: Foundations and Applications pp 318–347Cite as

SPCF: its model, calculus, and computational power

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 666))

Abstract

SPCF is an idealized sequential programming language, based on Plotkin's language PCF, that permits programmers and programs to observe the evaluation order of procedures. In this paper, we construct a fully abstract model of SPCF using a new mathematical framework suitable for defining fully abstract models of sequential functional languages. Then, we develop an extended typed λ-calculus to specify the operational semantics of SPCF and show that the calculus is complete for the constant-free sub-language. Finally, we prove that SPCF is computationally complete: it can express all the computable (recursively enumerable) elements in its fully abstract model.

The authors were supported in part by NSF grants CCR 89–17022 and OCR 91–22518.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Rice University, 77005, Houston, TX

    Ramarao Kanneganti, Robert Cartwright & Matthias Felleisen

Authors
  1. Ramarao Kanneganti
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  2. Robert Cartwright
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  3. Matthias Felleisen
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Editor information

J. W. de Bakker W. -P. de Roever G. Rozenberg

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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kanneganti, R., Cartwright, R., Felleisen, M. (1993). SPCF: its model, calculus, and computational power. In: de Bakker, J.W., de Roever, W.P., Rozenberg, G. (eds) Semantics: Foundations and Applications. REX 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 666. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56596-5_39

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56596-5_39

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-56596-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47595-8

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