It is many years since Landin, Burge and others showed us how to apply higher order techniques and thus laid some foundations for modern functional programming. The advantage of higher order descriptions - that they can be very succinct and clear - has been percolating through ever since. Current research topics range from the design, implementation and use of higher order proof assistants and theorem provers, through program specification and verification, and programming language design, to its applications in hardware description and verification. The papers in this book represent the presentations made at a workshop held at Banff, Canada, September 10-14 1990 and organised by the Computer Science Department of the University of Calgary. The workshop gathered together researchers interested in applying higher order techniques to a range of problems. The workshop format had a few (but fairly long) presentations per day. This left ample time for healthy discussion and argument, many of which continued on into the small hours. With so much to choose from, the program had to be selective. This year's workshop was divided into five parts: 1. Expressing and reasoning about concurrency: Warren Burton and Ken Jackson, John Hughes, and Faron Moller. 2. Reasoning about synchronous circuits: Geraint Jones and Mary Sheeran (with a bonus on the fast Fourier transform from Geraint). 3. Reasoning about asynchronous circuits: Albert Camilleri, Jo Ebergen, and Martin Rem. 4. Categorical concepts for programming languages: Robin Cockett, Barry Jay, and Andy Pitts.

Klappentext

This volume contains the papers presented at a workshop held at Banff, Canada, 10-14 September 1990, which gathered together researchers interested in applying higher order techniques to: reasoning about concurrency, specifying and reasoning about synchronous circuits (specifically butterfly circuits), reasoning about delay insensitive circuits, categorical concepts for programming languages, and support for automated reasoning. In the 1960's and 70's, Landin, Burge and others showed us how to apply higher order techniques and laid practical foundations for modern functional programming. The advantage of higher order techniques is clear: they provide succinct and clear specifications that are easy to reason with. Over the past few years, higher order techniques have been applied successfully to a wide range of applications in software, hardware, and communications. While the papers present recent research results, they have been written so as to be accessible to non hard- liners. This volume will be of interest to readers who wish to gain a broad view of the subject, as well as to specialists in specific subtopics.

Inhalt
Partially Deterministic Functions.- Nondeterministic Functional Programming with Sets.- Algebra as a Tool for Real Time Analysis.- The Study of Butterflies.- Sorts of Butterflies.- A Fast Flutter by the Fourier Transform.- Parallel Computations and Delay-Insensitive Circuits.- The Nature of Delay-Insensitive Computing.- A Higher Order Logic Mechanization of the CSP Failures-Divergence Semantics.- Partial Functions, Ordered Categories, Limits and Cartesian Closure.- Evaluation Logic.- Conditional Control is Not Quite Categorical Control.- Simple Type Theory in EVES.- Formal Synthesis.- Proving (Facts About) Ruby.- Author Index.