English

Strong Call by Value is Reasonable for Time

Programming Languages 2021-02-12 v1

Abstract

The invariance thesis of Slot and van Emde Boas states that all reasonable models of computation simulate each other with polynomially bounded overhead in time and constant-factor overhead in space. In this paper we show that a family of strong call-by-value strategies in the λ\lambda-calculus are reasonable for time. The proof is based on a construction of an appropriate abstract machine, systematically derived using Danvy et al.'s functional correspondence that connects higher-order interpreters with abstract-machine models by a well-established transformation technique. This is the first machine that implements a strong CbV strategy and simulates β\beta-reduction with the overhead polynomial in the number of β\beta-steps and in the size of the initial term. We prove this property using a form of amortized cost analysis \`a la Okasaki.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.05985,
  title  = {Strong Call by Value is Reasonable for Time},
  author = {Małgorzata Biernacka and Witold Charatonik and Tomasz Drab},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.05985},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

31 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:04:04.007Z