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# The Sigma-Semantics: A Comprehensive Semantics for Functional Programs

Chitil, Olaf (1996) The Sigma-Semantics: A Comprehensive Semantics for Functional Programs. Technical report. RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany AIB-07-1996. (doi:AIB-07-1996) (KAR id:21372)

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## Abstract

A comprehensive semantics for functional programs is presented, which generalizes the well-known call-by-value and call-by-name semantics. By permitting a separate choice between call-by value and call-by-name for every argument position of every function and parameterizing the semantics by this choice we abstract from the parameter-passing mechanism. Thus common and distinguishing features of all instances of the sigma-semantics, especially call-by-value and call-by-name semantics, are highlighted. Furthermore, a property can be validated for all instances of the sigma-semantics by a single proof. This is employed for proving the equivalence of the given denotational (fixed-point based) and two operational (reduction based) definitions of the sigma-semantics. We present and apply means for very simple proofs of equivalence with the denotational sigma-semantics for a large class of reduction-based sigma-semantics. Our basis are simple first-order constructor-based functional programs with patterns.

Item Type: Monograph (Technical report) AIB-07-1996 Pre-version of the Fundamenta Informaticae paper. Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming, Faculties > Sciences > School of Computing > Theoretical Computing Group Olaf Chitil 03 Sep 2009 18:53 UTC 23 Jan 2020 04:04 UTC https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/21372 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7986-9929
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