ENGLISH

Abstract computing machines: a lambda calculus perspective

Book information

Publisher
Springer
Year
2005
ISBN
9783540211464, 3-540-21146-2
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (2890971 bytes)
Series
Texts in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series
Edition
1
Pages
381\381
Topic
Technique
Library
mexmat
Time added
2009-07-20 03:45:11

Description

The book addresses ways and means of organizing computations, highlighting the relationship between algorithms and the basic mechanisms and runtime structures necessary to execute them using machines. It completely abstracts from concrete programming languages and machine architectures, taking instead the lambda calculus as the basic programming and program execution model to design various abstract machines for its correct implementation. The emphasis is on fully normalizing machines based on a full-fledged beta-reduction as an essential prerequisite for symbolic computations that treat functions and variables truly as first-class objects. Their weakly normalizing counterparts are shown to be functional abstract machines that sacrifice the flavors of full beta-reductions for decidedly simpler runtime structures and improved runtime efficiency. Further downgrading of the lambda calculus leads to classical imperative (von Neumann) machines that permit side-effecting operations on the runtime environment.

Similar books