We give transparent proofs of the PTIME-completeness of two decision problems for terms in the λ-calculus. The first is a reproof of the theorem that type inference for the simply-typed λ-calculus is PTIME-complete. Our proof is interesting because it uses no more than the standard combinators Church knew of some 70 years ago, in which the terms are linear affine – each bound variable occurs at most once. We then derive a modification of Church's coding of Booleans that is linear, where each bound variable occurs exactly once. A consequence of this construction is that any interpreter for linear λ-calculus requires polynomial time. The logical interpretation of this consequence is that the problem of normalizing proofnets for multiplicative linear logic (MLL) is also PTIME-complete.

In this paper we present a notion of expansion of a term in the lambda-calculus which transforms terms into linear terms. This transformation replaces each occurrence of a variable in the original term by a fresh variable taking into account non-trivial implications in the structure of the term caused by these simple replacements. We prove that the class of terms which can be expanded is the same of terms typable in an Intersection Type System, i.e. the strongly normalizable terms. We then show that expansion is preserved by weak-head reduction, the reduction considered by functional programming languages.

We argue that teaching purely functional programming as such in freshman courses is detrimental to both the curriculum as well as to promoting the paradigm. Instead, we need to focus on the more general aims of teaching elementary techniques of programming and essential concepts of computing. We support this viewpoint with experience gained during several semesters of teaching large first-year classes (up to 600 students) in Haskell. These classes consisted of computer science students as well as students from other disciplines. We have systematically gathered student feedback by conducting surveys after each semester. This article contributes an approach to the use of modern functional languages in first year courses and, based on this, advocates the use of functional languages in this setting.

XML is already a de facto industry standard for data exchange, it has from an early stage been embraced by database researchers, and it is gaining increasing interest from programming language researchers. The PLAN-X workshops aim at providing a meeting ground for researchers from the XML, programming language and database communities.

A permutation phrase is a sequence of elements (possibly of different types) in which each element occurs exactly once and the order is irrelevant. Some of the permutable elements may be optional. We show how to extend a parser combinator library with support for parsing such free-order constructs. A user of the library can easily write parsers for permutation phrases and does not need to care about checking and reordering the recognized elements. Applications include the generation of parsers for attributes of XML tags and Haskell's record syntax.

In this paper, we describe two techniques for the efficient, modularized implementation of a large class of algorithms. We illustrate these techniques using several examples, including efficient generic unification algorithms that use reference cells to encode substitutions, and highly modular language implementations. We chose these examples to illustrate the following important techniques that we believe many functional programmers would find useful. First, defining recursive data types by splitting them into two levels: a structure defining level, and a recursive knot-tying level. Second, the use of rank-2 polymorphism inside Haskell's record types to implement a kind of type-parameterized modules. Finally, we explore techniques that allow us to combine already existing recursive Haskell data-types with the highly modular style of programming proposed here.

This work presents simple decision procedures for the propositional calculus and for a simple predicate calculus. These decision procedures are based upon enumeration of the possible values of the variables in an expression. Yet, by taking advantage of the sequential semantics of boolean connectors, not all values are enumerated. In some cases, dramatic savings of machine time can be achieved. In particular, an equivalence checker for a small programming language appears to be usable in practice.

An injective finite mapping is an abstraction common to many programs. We describe the design of an injective finite mapping and its implementation in Curry, a functional logic language. Curry supports the concurrent asynchronous execution of distinct portions of a program. This condition prevents passing from one portion to another a structure containing a partially constructed mapping to ensure that a new choice does not violate the injectivity condition. We present some motivating problems and we show fragments of programs that solve these problems using our design and implementation.

This paper implements a simple and elegant version of bottom-up Kilbury chart parsing (Kilbury, 1985; Wirén, 1992). This is one of the many chart parsing variants, which are all based on the data structure of charts. The chart parsing process uses inference rules to add new edges to the chart, and parsing is complete when no further edges can be added. One novel aspect of this implementation is that it doesn't have to rely on a global state for the implementation of the chart. This makes the code clean, elegant and declarative, while still having the same space and time complexity as the standard imperative implementations.

Comparing two types for equality is an essential ingredient for an implementation of dynamic types. Once equality has been established, it is safe to cast a value from one type to another. In a language with run-time type analysis, implementing such a procedure is fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, this naive implementation destructs and rebuilds the argument while iterating over its type structure. However, by using higher-order polymorphism, a casting function can treat its argument parametrically. We demonstrate this solution in two frameworks for ad-hoc polymorphism: intensional type analysis and Haskell type classes.

Using Haskell as a digital circuit description language, we transform a ripple carry adder that requires $O(n)$ time to add two $n$-bit words into a parallel carry lookahead adder that requires $O(\log n)$ time. The ripple carry adder uses a scan function to calculate carry bits, but this scan cannot be parallelized directly since it is applied to a non-associative function. Several techniques are applied in order to introduce parallelism, including partial evaluation and symbolic function representation. The derivation given here constitutes a semi-formal correctness proof, and it also brings out explicitly each of the ideas underlying the algorithm.