Operational Semantics for Functional Logic Languages

In this work we provide a semantic description of functional logic languages covering notions like laziness, sharing, and non-determinism. Such a semantic description is essential, for instance, to have appropriate language definitions in order to reason about programs and check the correctness of implementations. First, we define a "big-step" semantics in natural style to relate expressions and their evaluated results. Since this semantics is not sufficient to reason about the operational aspects of programs, we also define a "small-step" operational semantics covering the main features of functional logic languages. Finally, we demonstrate the equivalence of the "small-step" semantics and the natural semantics.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: ENTCS
• Authors: Elvira Albert, Michael Hanus, Frank Huch, Javier Oliver, Germán Vidal
• Keywords: ENTCS 2002, Functional Logic, Semantic Description, Semantics