The Essence of Computation

By presenting state-of-the-art aspects of the theory of computation, this book commemorates the 60th birthday of Neil D. Jones, whose scientific career parallels the evolution of computation theory itself. The 20 reviewed research papers presented together with a brief survey of the work of Neil D. Jones were written by scientists who have worked with him, in the roles of student, colleague, and, in one case, mentor. In accordance with the Festschrift's subtitle, the papers are organized in parts on computational complexity, program analysis, and program transformation.

Inhalt

Computational Complexity.- General Size-Change Termination and Lexicographic Descent.- Comparing Star and Pancake Networks.- Synchronization of Finite Automata: Contributions to an Old Problem.- Lambda Calculi and Linear Speedups.- Program Analysis.- Design and Implementation of a Special-Purpose Static Program Analyzer for Safety-Critical Real-Time Embedded Software.- Meta-circular Abstract Interpretation in Prolog.- Flow Analysis: Games and Nets.- On Extracting Static Semantics.- Foundations of the Bandera Abstraction Tools.- Types in Program Analysis.- Flow Logic: A Multi-paradigmatic Approach to Static Analysis.- Structure-Preserving Binary Relations for Program Abstraction.- Program Transformation.- Principles of Inverse Computation and the Universal Resolving Algorithm.- A Symmetric Approach to Compilation and Decompilation.- The Abstraction and Instantiation of String-Matching Programs.- WSDFU: Program Transformation System Based on Generalized Partial Computation.- Homeomorphic Embedding for Online Termination of Symbolic Methods.- Simple Driving Techniques.- Demonstrating Lambda Calculus Reduction.- From Type Inference to Configuration.