2017-03-16: Bob Atkey (MSP)

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 21:24:08 +0100

Bob Atkey (MSP)

MSP 101: Operational and Denotational Semantics for PCF

Abstract

PCF is the prototypical functional programming language, with two data types (naturals and booleans), lambda-abstraction and recursion. PCF was introduced by Gordon Plotkin in his seminal "LCF Considered as a Programming Language" paper from 1977. Despite PCF's simplicity, its semantics is theoretically interesting. I will introduce PCF, its operational semantics, the "standard" domain-theoretic denotational semantics and show that the two agree on closed programs. Finally, I will discuss observational equivalence for PCF and show that the denotational semantics fails to be "fully abstract".

2017-03-16 14:00:00 UTC
LT1310