Lambda Calculus Types And Models

This introduction to lambda-calculus looks at aspects of the theory: combinatory logic, models, and type streams, showing how they interlink and underpin computer science.

This introduction to lambda-calculus looks at aspects of the theory: combinatory logic, models, and type streams, showing how they interlink and underpin computer science.

This handbook with exercises reveals in formalisms, hitherto mainly used for hardware and software design and verification, unexpected mathematical beauty. The lambda calculus forms a prototype universal programming language, which in its untyped version is related to Lisp, and was treated in the first author's classic The Lambda Calculus (1984). The formalism has since been extended with types and used in functional programming (Haskell, Clean) and proof assistants (Coq, Isabelle, HOL), used in designing and verifying IT products and mathematical proofs. In this book, the authors focus on three classes of typing for lambda terms: simple types, recursive types and intersection types. It is in these three formalisms of terms and types that the unexpected mathematical beauty is revealed. The treatment is authoritative and comprehensive, complemented by an exhaustive bibliography, and numerous exercises are provided to deepen the readers' understanding and increase their confidence using types.

Combinatory logic and lambda-calculus, originally devised in the 1920s, have since developed into linguistic tools, especially useful in programming languages. The authors' previous book served as the main reference for introductory courses on lambda-calculus for over 20 years: this version is thoroughly revised and offers an account of the subject with the same authoritative exposition. The grammar and basic properties of both combinatory logic and lambda-calculus are discussed, followed by an introduction to type-theory. Typed and untyped versions of the systems, and their differences, are c.

This handbook with exercises reveals the mathematical beauty of formalisms hitherto mostly used for software and hardware design and verification.

The book contains a completely new presentation of classical results in the field of Lambda Calculus, together with new results. The text is unique in that it presents a new calculus (Parametric Lambda Calculus) which can be instantiated to obtain already known lambda-calculi. Some properties, which in the literature have been proved separately for different calculi, can be proved once for the Parametric one. The lambda calculi are presented from a Computer Science point of view, with a particular emphasis on their semantics, both operational and denotational.

This is a set of lecture notes that developed out of courses on the lambda calculus that the author taught at the University of Ottawa in 2001 and at Dalhousie University in 2007 and 2013. Topics covered in these notes include the untyped lambda calculus, the Church-Rosser theorem, combinatory algebras, the simply-typed lambda calculus, the Curry-Howard isomorphism, weak and strong normalization, polymorphism, type inference, denotational semantics, complete partial orders, and the language PCF.

The lambda calculus was developed in the 1930s by Alonzo Church. The calculus turned out to be an interesting model of computation and became theprototype for untyped functional programming languages. Operational and denotational semantics for the calculus served as examples for otherprogramming languages. In typed lambda calculi, lambda terms are classified according to their applicative behavior. In the 1960s it was discovered that the types of typed lambda calculi are in fact appearances of logical propositions. Thus there are two possible views of typed lambda calculi: - as models of computation, where terms are viewed as programs in a typed programming language; - as logical theories, where the types are viewed as propositions and the terms as proofs. The practical spin-off from these studies are: - functional programming languages which are mathematically more succinct than imperative programs; - systems for automated proof checking based on lambda caluli. This volume is the proceedings of TLCA '93, the first international conference on Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications,organized by the Department of Philosophy of Utrecht University. It includes29 papers selected from 51 submissions.