Denotation by Transformation

Abstract. It has often been observed that a point-free style of programvides a more abstract view on programs. We aim to use the gain in abstraction to obtain a denotational semantics for functional logic languages in a straightforward way. We propose a set of basic operations based on which arbitrary functional logic programs can be transformed to point-free programs. Surprisingly, the additional features of functional logic languages do require less basic operations to obtain point-free programs than known approaches for functional languages. This effect is mostly due to employing so called function patterns. We interpret the basic operations in relation algebra to obtain a denotational semantics for the whole point-free subset of functional logic languages. As this subset is connected to the whole language by the proposed transformation this enables a purely algebraic view on the whole language. A final example illustrates the additional possibilities gained by this approach.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: LOPSTR
• Authors: Bernd Braßel, Jan Christiansen
• Keywords: Basic Operations, Functional Logic, Functional Logic Languages, LOPSTR 2007