Relational program derivation is the technique of stepwise refining a relational specification to a program by algebraic rules. The program thus obtained is correct by construction. Meanwhile, dependent type theory is rich enough to express various correctness properties to be verified by the type checker. We have developed a library, AoPA (Algebra of Programming in Agda), to encode relational derivations in the dependently typed programming language Agda. A program is coupled with an algebraic derivation whose correctness is guaranteed by the type system. Two non-trivial examples are presented: an optimisation problem and a derivation of quicksort in which well-founded recursion is used to model terminating hylomorphisms in a language with inductive types.

Regular-expression derivatives are an old, but elegant, technique for compiling regular expressions to deterministic finite-state machines. It easily supports extending the regular-expression operators with boolean operations, such as intersection and complement. Unfortunately, this technique has been lost in the sands of time and few computer scientists are aware of it. In this paper, we reexamine regular-expression derivatives and report on our experiences in the context of two different functional-language implementations. The basic implementation is simple and we show how to extend it to handle large character sets (e.g., Unicode). We also show that the derivatives approach leads to smaller state machines than the traditional algorithm given by McNaughton and Yamada.

We present natural semantics for acyclic as well as cyclic call-by-need lambda calculi, which are proved equivalent to the reduction semantics given by Ariola and Felleisen (J. Funct. Program., vol. 7, no. 3, 1997). The natural semantics are big-step and use global heaps, where evaluation is suspended and memorized. The reduction semantics are small-step, and evaluation is suspended and memorized locally in let-bindings. Thus two styles of formalization describe the call-by-need strategy from different angles. The natural semantics for the acyclic calculus is revised from the previous presentation by Maraist et al. (J. Funct. Program., vol. 8, no. 3, 1998), and its adequacy is ascribed to its correspondence with the reduction semantics, which has been proved equivalent to call-by-name by Ariola and Felleisen. The natural semantics for the cyclic calculus is inspired by that of Launchbury (1993) and Sestoft (1997), and we state its adequacy using a denotational semantics in the style of Launchbury; adequacy of the reduction semantics for the cyclic calculus is in turn ascribed to its correspondence with the natural semantics.

A much beloved and widely used example showing the elegance and simplicity of lazy functional programming represents itself as “The Sieve of Eratosthenes.” This paper shows that this example is not the sieve and presents an implementation that actually is.

We present an extension of the λ(η)-calculus with a case construct that propagates through functions like a head linear substitution, and show that this construction permits to recover the expressiveness of ML-style pattern matching. We then prove that this system enjoys the Church–Rosser property using a semi-automatic ‘divide and conquer’ technique by which we determine all the pairs of commuting subsystems of the formalism (considering all the possible combinations of the nine primitive reduction rules). Finally, we prove a separation theorem similar to Böhm's theorem for the whole formalism.

Moggi's Computational Monads and Power et al.'s equivalent notion of Freyd category have captured a large range of computational effects present in programming languages. Examples include non-termination, non-determinism, exceptions, continuations, side effects and input/output. We present generalisations of both computational monads and Freyd categories, which we call parameterised monads and parameterised Freyd categories, that also capture computational effects with parameters. Examples of such are composable continuations, side effects where the type of the state varies and input/output where the range of inputs and outputs varies. By considering structured parameterisation also, we extend the range of effects to cover separated side effects and multiple independent streams of I/O. We also present two typed λ-calculi that soundly and completely model our categorical definitions – with and without symmetric monoidal parameterisation – and act as prototypical languages with parameterised effects.

Pure pattern calculus supports pattern-matching functions in which patterns are first-class citizens that can be passed as parameters, evaluated and returned as results. This new expressive power supports two new forms of polymorphism. Path polymorphism allows recursive functions to traverse arbitrary data structures. Pattern polymorphism allows patterns to be treated as parameters which may be collected from various sources or generated from training data. A general framework for pattern calculi is developed. It supports a proof of confluence that is parameterised by the nature of the matching algorithm, suitable for the pure pattern calculus and all other known pattern calculi.

As a means of transmitting not only data but also code encapsulated within functions, higher-order channels provide an advanced form of task parallelism in parallel computations. In the presence of mutable references, however, they pose a safety problem because references may be transmitted to remote threads where they are no longer valid. This paper presents an ML-like parallel language with type-safe higher-order channels. By type safety, we mean that no value written to a channel contains references, or equivalently, that no reference escapes via a channel from the thread where it is created. The type system uses a typing judgment that is capable of deciding whether the value to which a term evaluates contains references or not. The use of such a typing judgment also makes it easy to achieve another desirable feature of channels, channel locality, that associates every channel with a unique thread for serving all values addressed to it. Our type system permits mutable references in sequential computations and also ensures that mutable references never interfere with parallel computations. Thus, it provides both flexibility in sequential programming and ease of implementing parallel computations.

The Iterator pattern gives a clean interface for element-by-element access to a collection, independent of the collection's shape. Imperative iterations using the pattern have two simultaneous aspects: mapping and accumulating. Various existing functional models of iteration capture one or other of these aspects, but not both simultaneously. We argue that C. McBride and R. Paterson's applicative functors (Applicative programming with effects, J. Funct. Program., 18 (1): 1–13, 2008), and in particular the corresponding traverse operator, do exactly this, and therefore capture the essence of the Iterator pattern. Moreover, they do so in a way that nicely supports modular programming. We present some axioms for traversal, discuss modularity concerns and illustrate with a simple example, the wordcount problem.

The worker/wrapper transformation is a technique for changing the type of a computation, usually with the aim of improving its performance. It has been used by compiler writers for many years, but the technique is little known in the wider functional programming community, and has never been described precisely. In this article we explain, formalise and explore the generality of the worker/wrapper transformation. We also provide a systematic recipe for its use as an equational reasoning technique for improving the performance of programs, and illustrate the power of this recipe using a range of examples.

Arrows are an extension of the well-established notion of a monad in functional-programming languages. This paper presents several examples and constructions and develops denotational semantics of arrows as monoids in categories of bifunctors Cop × C → C. Observing similarities to monads – which are monoids in categories of endofunctors C → C – it then considers Eilenberg–Moore and Kleisli constructions for arrows. The latter yields Freyd categories, mathematically formulating the folklore claim ‘Arrows are Freyd categories.’

Nested datatypes are families of datatypes that are indexed over all types such that the constructors may relate different family members (unlike the homogeneous lists). Moreover, the argument types of the constructors refer to indices given by expressions in which the family name may occur. Especially in this case of true nesting, termination of functions that traverse these data structures is far from being obvious. A joint paper with A. Abel and T. Uustalu (Theor. Comput. Sci., 333 (1–2), 2005, pp. 3–66) proposed iteration schemes that guarantee termination not by structural requirements but just by polymorphic typing. They are generic in the sense that no specific syntactic form of the underlying datatype “functor” is required. However, there was no induction principle for the verification of the programs thus obtained, although they are well known in the usual model of initial algebras on endofunctor categories. The new contribution is a representation of nested datatypes in intensional type theory (more specifically, in the calculus of inductive constructions) that is still generic and covers true nesting, guarantees termination of all expressible programs, and has an induction principle that allows to prove functoriality of monotonicity witnesses (maps for nested datatypes) and naturality properties of iteratively defined polymorphic functions.

Combinatorial search strategies including depth-first, breadth-first and depth-bounded search are shown to be different implementations of a common algebraic specification that emphasizes the compositionality of the strategies. This specification is placed in a categorical setting that combines algebraic specifications and monads.