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Full abstraction for expressiveness: history, myths and facts†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2014

DANIELE GORLA  and
UWE NESTMANN
DANIELE GORLA
Affiliation:
Dip. di Informatica, ‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma. Via Salaria 113, 00198 Roma, Italy Email: gorla@di.uniroma1.it
UWE NESTMANN
Affiliation:
Technische Universitat Berlin. Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, 10587 Berlin, Germany Email: uwe.nestmann@tu-berlin.de
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Abstract

What does it mean that an encoding is fully abstract? What does it not mean? In this position paper, we want to help the reader to evaluate the real benefits of using such a notion when studying the expressiveness of programming languages. Several examples and counterexamples are given. In some cases, we work at a very abstract level; in other cases, we give concrete samples taken from the field of process calculi, where the theory of expressiveness has been mostly developed in the last years.

Type
Paper
Information
Mathematical Structures in Computer Science , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , May 2016 , pp. 639 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

†

Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant NE-1505/2-1.

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