Abstract
The identification of the needed redexes in a term is an undecidable problem. We introduce a (partially decidable) type assignment system, which distinguishes certain redexes called the allowable redexes. For a well-typed term e, allowable redexes are needed redexes. In addition, with principal typing, all the needed redexes of a normalisable term are allowable. Using these results, we are able to identify all the needed reductions of a principally typed normalisable term. Possible applications of these results include strictness and sharing analysis for functional programming languages, and a reduction strategy for well-typed terms which satisfies Lévy's notion of optimal reduction.
This research was supported by a SERC Research Grant.
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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Gardner, P. (1994). Discovering needed reductions using type theory. In: Hagiya, M., Mitchell, J.C. (eds) Theoretical Aspects of Computer Software. TACS 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 789. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57887-0_115
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57887-0_115
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