A Concurrent Pattern Calculus

TL;DR

The paper introduces Concurrent Pattern Calculus (CPC), a process calculus that uses pattern unification for symmetrical interaction, enhancing expressiveness and enabling encoding of many existing calculi.

Contribution

It generalizes pattern matching to unification, allowing symmetrical data exchange and broadening the expressiveness of process calculi.

Findings

CPC can encode many existing process calculi.

Unification-based interaction enables symmetrical communication.

Behavioral theory accounts for pattern discriminability.

Abstract

Concurrent pattern calculus (CPC) drives interaction between processes by comparing data structures, just as sequential pattern calculus drives computation. By generalising from pattern matching to pattern unification, interaction becomes symmetrical, with information flowing in both directions. CPC provides a natural language to express trade where information exchange is pivotal to interaction. The unification allows some patterns to be more discriminating than others; hence, the behavioural theory must take this aspect into account, so that bisimulation becomes subject to compatibility of patterns. Many popular process calculi can be encoded in CPC; this allows for a gain in expressiveness, formalised through encodings.