Compiling With Classical Connectives

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of polarity in computation to include call-by-need evaluation, enabling the compilation of Haskell-like languages with classical connectives and a generalized dual shift framework.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized notion of polarity with four dual shifts to incorporate call-by-need sharing into classical logic-based compilation.

Findings

Extended polarity to include call-by-need with sharing mechanisms

Classical connectives encode a wide range of types and data structures

Bridging parametric polymorphism and data types via involutive negations

Abstract

The study of polarity in computation has revealed that an "ideal" programming language combines both call-by-value and call-by-name evaluation; the two calling conventions are each ideal for half the types in a programming language. But this binary choice leaves out call-by-need which is used in practice to implement lazy-by-default languages like Haskell. We show how the notion of polarity can be extended beyond the value/name dichotomy to include call-by-need by adding a mechanism for sharing which is enough to compile a Haskell-like functional language with user-defined types. The key to capturing sharing in this mixed-evaluation setting is to generalize the usual notion of polarity "shifts:" rather than just two shifts (between positive and negative) we have a family of four dual shifts. We expand on this idea of logical duality -- "and" is dual to "or;" proof is dual to refutation -- for the purpose of compiling a variety of types. Based on a general notion of data and codata, we show how classical connectives can be used to encode a wide range of built-in and user-defined types. In contrast with an intuitionistic logic corresponding to pure functional programming, these classical connectives bring more of the pleasant symmetries of classical logic to the computationally-relevant, constructive setting. In particular, an involutive pair of negations bridges the gulf between the wide-spread notions of parametric polymorphism and abstract data types in programming languages. To complete the study of duality in compilation, we also consider the dual to call-by-need evaluation, which shares the computation within the control flow of a program instead of computation within the information flow.