Plotkin and Pretnar's handlers for algebraic effects occupy a sweet spot in the design space of abstractions for effectful computation. By separating effect signatures from their implementation, algebraic effects provide a high degree of modularity, allowing programmers to express effectful programs independently of the concrete interpretation of their effects. A handler is an interpretation of the effects of an algebraic computation. The handler abstraction adapts well to multiple settings: pure or impure, strict or lazy, static types or dynamic types. This is a position paper whose main aim is to popularise the handler abstraction. We give a gentle introduction to its use, a collection of illustrative examples, and a straightforward operational semantics. We describe our Haskell implementation of handlers in detail, outline the ideas behind our OCaml, SML, and Racket implementations, and present experimental results comparing handlers with existing code.

International audienceType Classes have met a large success in Haskell and Isabelle, as a solution for sharing notations by overloading and for specifying with abstract structures by quantification on contexts. However, both systems are limited by second-class implementations of these con- structs, and these limitations are only overcomed by ad-hoc extensions to the respective systems. We propose an embedding of type classes into a dependent type theory that is first-class and supports some of the most popular extensions right away. The implementation is correspondingly cheap, general and integrates well inside the system, as we have experimented in Coq. We show how it can be used to help structured programming and proving by way of examples

This paper exhibits the power of programming with dependent types by dint of embedding three domain-specific languages: Cryptol, a language for cryptographic protocols; a small data description language; and relational algebra. Each example demonstrates particular design patterns inherent to dependently-typed programming. Documenting these techniques paves the way for further research in domain-specific embedded type systems.

Abstract. The recent success of languages like Agda and Coq demonstrates the potential of using dependent types for programming. These systems rely on many high-level features like datatype definitions, pattern matching and implicit arguments to facilitate the use of the languages. However, these features complicate the metatheoretical study and are a potential source of bugs. To address these issues we introduce ΠΣ, a dependently typed core language. It is small enough for metatheoretical study and the type checker is small enough to be formally verified. In this language there is only one mechanism for recursion-used for types, functions and infinite objectsand an explicit mechanism to control unfolding, based on lifted types. Furthermore structural equality is used consistently for values and types; this is achieved by a new notion of α-equality for recursive definitions. We show, by translating several high-level constructions, that ΠΣ is suitable as a core language for dependently typed programming.

No abstract

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic properties of a restricted class of Petri nets equipped with stochastic mass action semantics. We establish a simple algebraic criterion for the existence of an equilibrium, that is to say an invariant probability that satisfies the detailed balance condition familiar from the thermodynamics of reaction networks. We also find that when such a probability exists, it can be described by a free energy function which combines an internal energy term and an entropy one. Under strong additional conditions, we show how the entropy term can be deconstructed using the finer-grained individual-token semantics of Petri nets.

We present a reduction of the Turing halting problem (in the simplified form of the Post correspondence problem) to the problem of whether a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) presented as a set of Kappa graph-rewriting rules has an equilibrium. It follows that the problem of whether a computable CTMC is dissipative (ie does not have an equilibrium) is undecidable.

Definition of functions by pattern matching has proved to be a key feature of functional programming languages. These definitions allow a clear, easy to read, concise expression of functions. Proof assistants -like the the Coq proof assistant (Coq) -and some programming languages -like the Epigram (Epigram) or Agda (Agda) systems -introduce types that can depend on values. These dependent types allow to refine the definition of a type by the use of values. This results in a more precise specification of data types and functions. For example, it is possible, in such a system, to define the type of the lists of a given length n. The user can then express the fact that the head function -computing the first element of a listcan only be applied to non empty lists. This refinement reduces the number of run times error and allows to integrate program design and program verification.In presence of dependent types, some cases in a definition by pattern matching can become useless. For example, the case of the empty list is useless in the definition of the function head: the type of this function is specified to prevent the user to apply it to an empty list.For the sake of clarity and expressivity, we do not want the user to have to handle these useless cases. Especially, if the user is using dependent types for programming, handling such useless cases breaks, by introducing pieces of proof, the natural flow of the program. But forgetting a useful case can break the consistency of the system. This creates the need for a method to safely detect and remove useless cases in a definition by pattern matching.Alas, this problem -even restricted to algebraic data typesis undecidable in presence of dependent types.We introduce a new method to detect useless cases based on the computation of over-approximations of the inhabitants of inductive data types and contexts. Not only, this method is proved correct but can also produce -in a systematic way -a complete matching in Coq, ensuring that the logical power of the system remains unchanged. Moreover, it is modular over the kind of approximated sets used. We give two example implementations of such Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. approximated sets: one is based on truncated terms, the other one on relations linking the number of occurrences of each constructor.