We compare the expressive power of three programming abstractions for user-defined computational effects: Plotkin and Pretnar’s effect handlers, Filinski’s monadic reflection, and delimited control. This comparison allows a precise discussion about the relative expressiveness of each programming abstraction. It also demonstrates the sensitivity of the relative expressiveness of user-defined effects to seemingly orthogonal language features. We present three calculi, one per abstraction, extending Levy’s call-by-push-value. For each calculus, we present syntax, operational semantics, a natural type-and-effect system, and, for effect handlers and monadic reflection, a set-theoretic denotational semantics. We establish their basic metatheoretic properties: safety, termination, and, where applicable, soundness and adequacy. Using Felleisen’s notion of a macro translation, we show that these abstractions can macro express each other, and show which translations preserve typeability. We use the adequate finitary set-theoretic denotational semantics for the monadic calculus to show that effect handlers cannot be macro expressed while preserving typeability either by monadic reflection or by delimited control. Our argument fails with simple changes to the type system such as polymorphism and inductive types. We supplement our development with a mechanised Abella formalisation.

Relational program verification is a variant of program verification where one can reason about two programs and as a special case about two executions of a single program on different inputs. Relational program verification can be used for reasoning about a broad range of properties, including equivalence and refinement, and specialized notions such as continuity, information flow security, or relative cost. In a higher-order setting, relational program verification can be achieved using relational refinement type systems, a form of refinement types where assertions have a relational interpretation. Relational refinement type systems excel at relating structurally equivalent terms but provide limited support for relating terms with very different structures. We present a logic, called relational higher-order logic (RHOL), for proving relational properties of a simply typed λ-calculus with inductive types and recursive definitions. RHOL retains the type-directed flavor of relational refinement type systems but achieves greater expressivity through rules which simultaneously reason about the two terms as well as rules which only contemplate one of the two terms. We show that RHOL has strong foundations, by proving an equivalence with higher-order logic, and leverage this equivalence to derive key meta-theoretical properties: subject reduction, admissibility of a transitivity rule, and set-theoretical soundness. Moreover, we define sound embeddings for several existing relational type systems such as relational refinement types and type systems for dependency analysis and relative cost, and we verify examples that were out of reach of prior work.

Session types are a rich type discipline, based on linear types, that lifts the sort of safety claims that come with type systems to communications. However, web-based applications and microservices are often written in a mix of languages, with type disciplines in a spectrum between static and dynamic typing. Gradual session types address this mixed setting by providing a framework which grants seamless transition between statically typed handling of sessions and any required degree of dynamic typing. We propose Gradual GV as a gradually typed extension of the functional session type system GV. Following a standard framework of gradual typing, Gradual GV consists of an external language, which relaxes the type system of GV using dynamic types; an internal language with casts, for which operational semantics is given; and a cast-insertion translation from the former to the latter. We demonstrate type and communication safety as well as blame safety, thus extending previous results to functional languages with session-based communication. The interplay of linearity and dynamic types requires a novel approach to specifying the dynamics of the language.

We present a general methodology of proving the decidability of equational theory of programming language concepts in the framework of second-order algebraic theories. We propose a Haskell-based analysis tool, i.e. Second-Order Laboratory, which assists the proofs of confluence and strong normalisation of computation rules derived from second-order algebraic theories. To cover various examples in programming language theory, we combine and extend both syntactical and semantical results of the second-order computation in a non-trivial manner. We demonstrate how to prove decidability of various algebraic theories in the literature. It includes the equational theories of monad and λ-calculi, Plotkin and Power’s theory of states and bits, and Stark’s theory of π-calculus. We also demonstrate how this methodology can solve the coherence of monoidal categories.

Many types of interactive applications, including reactive systems implemented in hardware, interactive physics simulations and games, raise particular challenges when it comes to testing and debugging. Reasons include de facto lack of reproducibility and difficulties of automatically generating suitable test data. This paper demonstrates that certain variants of functional reactive programming (FRP) implemented in pure functional languages can mitigate such difficulties by offering referential transparency at the level of whole programs. This opens up for a multi-pronged approach for assisting with testing and debugging that works across platforms, including assertions based on temporal logic, recording and replaying of runs (also from deployed code), and automated random testing using QuickCheck. When combined with extensible forms of FRP that allow for constrained side effects, it allows us to not only validate software simulations but to analyse the effect of faults in reactive systems, confirm the efficacy of fault tolerance mechanisms and perform software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing. The approach has been validated on non-trivial systems implemented in several existing FRP implementations, by means of careful debugging using a tool that allows the test or simulation under scrutiny to be controlled, moving along the execution time line, and pin-pointing of violations of assertions on personal computers as well as external devices.