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Counting and generating terms in the binary lambda calculus*

Part of: JFP Research Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2015

KATARZYNA GRYGIEL  and
PIERRE LESCANNE
KATARZYNA GRYGIEL
Affiliation:
Theoretical Computer Science Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, ul. Prof. Łojasiewicza 6, 30-348 Kraków, Poland (e-mail: grygiel@tcs.uj.edu.pl)
PIERRE LESCANNE
Affiliation:
École normale supérieure de Lyon, LIP (UMR 5668 CNRS ENS Lyon UCBL INRIA), University of Lyon, 46 allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon, France (e-mail: pierre.lescanne@ens-lyon.fr)
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Abstract

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In a paper, entitled Binary lambda calculus and combinatory logic, John Tromp presents a simple way of encoding lambda calculus terms as binary sequences. In what follows, we study the numbers of binary strings of a given size that represent lambda terms and derive results from their generating functions, especially that the number of terms of size n grows roughly like 1.963447954. . .n. In a second part we use this approach to generate random lambda terms using Boltzmann samplers.

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Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 25 , 2015 , e24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Footnotes

*

This work was partially supported by the grant 2013/11/B/ST6/00975 founded by the Polish National Science Center.

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