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Intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters à la carte

Authors:

Cas van der Rest,

Casper Bach Poulsen,

Peter MossesAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 6, Issue OOPSLA2

Article No.: 192, Pages 1903 - 1932

https://doi.org/10.1145/3563355

Published: 31 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Specifying and mechanically verifying type safe programming languages requires significant effort. This effort can in theory be reduced by defining and reusing pre-verified, modular components. In practice, however, existing approaches to modular mechanical verification require many times as much specification code as plain, monolithic definitions. This makes it hard to develop new reusable components, and makes existing component specifications hard to grasp. We present an alternative approach based on intrinsically-typed interpreters, which reduces the size and complexity of modular specifications as compared to existing approaches. Furthermore, we introduce a new abstraction for safe-by-construction specification and composition of pre-verified type safe language components: language fragments. Language fragments are about as concise and easy to develop as plain, monolithic intrinsically-typed interpreters, but require about 10 times less code than previous approaches to modular mechanical verification of type safety.

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Cited By

Rao XRadziuk SWatt CGardner P(2025)Progressful Interpreters for Efficient WebAssembly MechanisationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048589:POPL(627-655)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704858
Carnier DPottier FKeuchel S(2024)Type Inference LogicsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897868:OOPSLA2(2125-2155)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689786
Saffrich HThiemann PWeidner MAlves SCockx J(2024)Intrinsically Typed Syntax, a Logical Relation, and the Scourge of the Transfer LemmaProceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Type-Driven Development10.1145/3678000.3678201(2-15)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2024
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Index Terms

Intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters à la carte
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Program verification

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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 6, Issue OOPSLA2

October 2022

1932 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3554307

Editor:
Philip Wadler
University of Edinburgh, UK

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Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 31 October 2022

Published in PACMPL Volume 6, Issue OOPSLA2

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Cited By

Rao XRadziuk SWatt CGardner P(2025)Progressful Interpreters for Efficient WebAssembly MechanisationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048589:POPL(627-655)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704858
Carnier DPottier FKeuchel S(2024)Type Inference LogicsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897868:OOPSLA2(2125-2155)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689786
Saffrich HThiemann PWeidner MAlves SCockx J(2024)Intrinsically Typed Syntax, a Logical Relation, and the Scourge of the Transfer LemmaProceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Type-Driven Development10.1145/3678000.3678201(2-15)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678000.3678201
Jin EAmin NZhang Y(2023)Extensible Metatheory Mechanization via Family PolymorphismProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912867:PLDI(1608-1632)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3591286
Cimini M(2023)Towards the Complexity Analysis of Programming Language Proof MethodsTheoretical Aspects of Computing – ICTAC 202310.1007/978-3-031-47963-2_8(100-118)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-47963-2_8

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