Space-Profiling Semantics of the Call-by-Value Lambda Calculus and the CPS Transformation

Abstract

We show that the CPS transformation from the call-by-value lambda calculus to a CPS language preserves space required for execution of a program within a constant factor. For the call-by-value lambda calculus we adopt a space-profiling semantics based on the profiling semantics of NESL by Blelloch and Greiner. However, we have noticed their semantics has some inconsistency between the treatments of stack space and heap space. This requires us to revise the semantics so that the semantics treats space in more consistent manner in order to obtain our result.