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On the transformation between direct and continuation semantics

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Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics (MFPS 1993)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 802))

Abstract

Proving the congruence between a direct semantics and a continuation semantics is often surprisingly complicated considering that direct-style λ-terms can be transformed into continuation style automatically. However, transforming the representation of a direct-style semantics into continuation style usually does not yield the expected representation of a continuation-style semantics (i.e., one written by hand).

The goal of our work is to automate the transformation between textual representations of direct semantics and of continuation semantics. Essentially, we identify properties of a direct-style representation (e.g., totality), and we generalize the transformation into continuation style accordingly. As a result, we can produce the expected representation of a continuation semantics, automatically. It is important to understand the transformation between representations of direct and of continuation semantics because it is these representations that get processed in any kind of semantics-based program manipulation (e.g., compiling, compiler generation, and partial evaluation). A tool producing a variety of continuation-style representations is a valuable new one in a programming-language workbench.

9th Conference on Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics. New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1993.

This work was initiated at Kansas State University, continued at Carnegie Mellon University, and completed at Aarhus University. It was partly supported by NSF under grant CCR-9102625.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Olivier Danvy & John Hatcliff

  2. Department of Computing and Information Sciences, Kansas State University, 66506, Manhattan, Kansas, USA

    Olivier Danvy & John Hatcliff

Authors
  1. Olivier Danvy
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  2. John Hatcliff
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Editor information

Stephen Brookes Michael Main Austin Melton Michael Mislove David Schmidt

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Danvy, O., Hatcliff, J. (1994). On the transformation between direct and continuation semantics. In: Brookes, S., Main, M., Melton, A., Mislove, M., Schmidt, D. (eds) Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics. MFPS 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 802. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58027-1_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58027-1_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58027-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48419-6

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