Towards Reversible Computation in Erlang

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reversible semantics for a subset of Erlang, enabling computations to be undone, which is a novel contribution in the context of concurrent actor-based languages.

Contribution

It is the first to define a reversible semantics specifically for Erlang, expanding reversible computing to actor-based concurrent languages.

Findings

Formal reversible semantics for Erlang introduced

Enables backward computation in Erlang programs

First reversible semantics for an actor-based language

Abstract

In a reversible language, any forward computation can be undone by a finite sequence of backward steps. Reversible computing has been studied in the context of different programming languages and formalisms, where it has been used for debugging and for enforcing fault-tolerance, among others. In this paper, we consider a subset of Erlang, a concurrent language based on the actor model. We formally introduce a reversible semantics for this language. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to define a reversible semantics for Erlang.