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Handle with care: relational interpretation of algebraic effects and handlers

Authors:

Dariusz Biernacki,

Piotr Polesiuk,

Filip SieczkowskiAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 2, Issue POPL

Article No.: 8, Pages 1 - 30

https://doi.org/10.1145/3158096

Published: 27 December 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Algebraic effects and handlers have received a lot of attention recently, both from the theoretical point of view and in practical language design. This stems from the fact that algebraic effects give the programmer unprecedented freedom to define, combine, and interpret computational effects. This plenty-of-rope, however, demands not only a deep understanding of the underlying semantics, but also access to practical means of reasoning about effectful code, including correctness and program equivalence. In this paper we tackle this problem by constructing a step-indexed relational interpretation of a call-by-value calculus with algebraic effect handlers and a row-based polymorphic type-and-effect system. Our calculus, while striving for simplicity, enjoys desirable theoretical properties, and is close to the cores of programming languages with algebraic effects used in the wild, while the logical relation we build for it can be used to reason about non-trivial properties, such as contextual equivalence and contextual approximation of programs. Our development has been fully formalised in the Coq proof assistant.

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Cited By

Yoshioka TSekiyama TIgarashi A(2024)Abstracting Effect Systems for Algebraic Effect HandlersProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746418:ICFP(455-484)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674641
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632930
Kidney DYang ZWu N(2024)Algebraic Effects Meet Hoare Logic in Cubical AgdaProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36328988:POPL(1663-1695)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
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Index Terms

Handle with care: relational interpretation of algebraic effects and handlers
1. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 2, Issue POPL

January 2018

1961 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3177123

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Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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Published: 27 December 2017

Published in PACMPL Volume 2, Issue POPL

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Cited By

Yoshioka TSekiyama TIgarashi A(2024)Abstracting Effect Systems for Algebraic Effect HandlersProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746418:ICFP(455-484)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674641
Moy CDimoulas CFelleisen M(2024)Effectful Software ContractsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329308:POPL(2639-2666)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632930
Kidney DYang ZWu N(2024)Algebraic Effects Meet Hoare Logic in Cubical AgdaProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36328988:POPL(1663-1695)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632898
Muroya KHamana M(2024)Term Evaluation Systems with Refinements: First-Order, Second-Order, and Contextual ImprovementFunctional and Logic Programming10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_3(31-61)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-981-97-2300-3_3
Müller MSchuster PStarup JOstermann KBrachthäuser J(2023)From Capabilities to Regions: Enabling Efficient Compilation of Lexical Effect HandlersProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228317:OOPSLA2(941-970)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
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Sieczkowski FPyzik MBiernacki D(2023)A General Fine-Grained Reduction Theory for Effect HandlersProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36078487:ICFP(511-540)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2023
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Wu CZhang RGuo JDe Rijke MFan YCheng X(2023)PRADA: Practical Black-box Adversarial Attacks against Neural Ranking ModelsACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/357692341:4(1-27)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2023
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Bach Poulsen Cvan der Rest C(2023)Hefty Algebras: Modular Elaboration of Higher-Order Algebraic EffectsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35712557:POPL(1801-1831)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2023
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de Vilhena PPottier F(2023)A Type System for Effect Handlers and Dynamic LabelsProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-031-30044-8_9(225-252)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2023
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Shi QWang YYao PZhang C(2022)Indexing the extended Dyck-CFL reachability for context-sensitive program analysisProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35633396:OOPSLA2(1438-1468)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2022
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