No Arabic abstract
Scripting code may present maintenance problems in the long run. There is, then, the call for methodologies that make it possible to control the properties of programs written in dynamic languages in an automatic fashion. We introduce Lucretia, a core language with an introspection primitive. Lucretia is equipped with a (retrofitted) static type system based on local updates of types that describe the structure of objects being used. In this way, we deal with one of the most dynamic features of scripting languages, that is, the runtime modification of object interfaces. Judgements in our systems have a Hoare-like shape, as they have a precondition and a postcondition part. Preconditions describe static approximations of the interfaces of visible objects before a certain expression has been executed and postconditions describe them after its execution. The field update operation complicates the issue of aliasing in the system. We cope with it by introducing intersection types in method signatures.
The Abella interactive theorem prover has proven to be an effective vehicle for reasoning about relational specifications. However, the system has a limitation that arises from the fact that it is based on a simply typed logic: formalizations that are identical except in the respect that they apply to different types have to be repeated at each type. We develop an approach that overcomes this limitation while preserving the logical underpinnings of the system. In this approach object constructors, formulas and other relevant logical notions are allowed to be parameterized by types, with the interpretation that they stand for the (infinite) collection of corresponding constructs that are obtained by instantiating the type parameters. The proof structures that we consider for formulas that are schematized in this fashion are limited to ones whose type instances are valid proofs in the simply typed logic. We develop schematic proof rules that ensure this property, a task that is complicated by the fact that type information influences the notion of unification that plays a key role in the logic. Our ideas, which have been implemented in an updated version of the system, accommodate schematic polymorphism both in the core logic of Abella and in the executable specification logic that it embeds.
The lambda-calculus with de Bruijn indices assembles each alpha-class of lambda-terms in a unique term, using indices instead of variable names. Intersection types provide finitary type polymorphism and can characterise normalisable lambda-terms through the property that a term is normalisable if and only if it is typeable. To be closer to computations and to simplify the formalisation of the atomic operations involved in beta-contractions, several calculi of explicit substitution were developed mostly with de Bruijn indices. Versions of explicit substitutions calculi without types and with simple type systems are well investigated in contrast
Object-oriented scripting languages such as JavaScript or Python gain in popularity due to their flexibility. Still, the growing code bases written in the languages call for methods that make possible to automatically control the properties of the programs that ensure their stability in the running time. We propose a type system, called Lucretia, that makes possible to control the object structure of languages with reflection. Subject reduction and soundness of the type system with respect to the semantics of the language is proved.
The intersection type assignment system has been designed directly as deductive system for assigning formulae of the implicative and conjunctive fragment of the intuitionistic logic to terms of lambda-calculus. But its relation with the logic is not standard. Between all the logics that have been proposed as its foundation, we consider ISL, which gives a logical interpretation of the intersection by splitting the intuitionistic conjunction into two connectives, with a local and global behaviour respectively, being the intersection the local one. We think ISL is a logic interesting by itself, and in order to support this claim we give a sequent calculus formulation of it, and we prove that it enjoys the cut elimination property.
This paper describes how to verify a parser for regular expressions in a functional programming language using predicate transformer semantics for a variety of effects. Where our previous work in this area focused on the semantics for a single effect, parsing requires a combination of effects: non-determinism, general recursion and mutable state. Reasoning about such combinations of effects is notoriously difficult, yet our approach using predicate transformers enables the careful separation of program syntax, correctness proofs and termination proofs.