Selected Papers of the 6th International Conference on Formal Structures and Deduction (FSCD 2021)

Editors:Naoki Kobayashi, Mauricio Ayala Rincon


1. A Functional Abstraction of Typed Invocation Contexts

Youyou Cong ; Chiaki Ishio ; Kaho Honda ; Kenichi Asai.
In their paper "A Functional Abstraction of Typed Contexts", Danvy and Filinski show how to derive a monomorphic type system of the shift and reset operators from a CPS semantics. In this paper, we show how this method scales to Felleisen's control and prompt operators. Compared to shift and reset, control and prompt exhibit a more dynamic behavior, in that they can manipulate a trail of contexts surrounding the invocation of previously captured continuations. Our key observation is that, by adopting a functional representation of trails in the CPS semantics, we can derive a type system that encodes all and only constraints imposed by the CPS semantics.

2. A modular construction of type theories

Frédéric Blanqui ; Gilles Dowek ; Emilie Grienenberger ; Gabriel Hondet ; François Thiré.
The lambda-Pi-calculus modulo theory is a logical framework in which many type systems can be expressed as theories. We present such a theory, the theory U, where proofs of several logical systems can be expressed. Moreover, we identify a sub-theory of U corresponding to each of these systems, and prove that, when a proof in U uses only symbols of a sub-theory, then it is a proof in that sub-theory.

3. Modularity and Combination of Associative Commutative Congruence Closure Algorithms enriched with Semantic Properties

Deepak Kapur.
Algorithms for computing congruence closure of ground equations over uninterpreted symbols and interpreted symbols satisfying associativity and commutativity (AC) properties are proposed. The algorithms are based on a framework for computing a congruence closure by abstracting nonflat terms by constants as proposed first in Kapur's congruence closure algorithm (RTA97). The framework is general, flexible, and has been extended also to develop congruence closure algorithms for the cases when associative-commutative function symbols can have additional properties including idempotency, nilpotency, identities, cancellativity and group properties as well as their various combinations. Algorithms are modular; their correctness and termination proofs are simple, exploiting modularity. Unlike earlier algorithms, the proposed algorithms neither rely on complex AC compatible well-founded orderings on nonvariable terms nor need to use the associative-commutative unification and extension rules in completion for generating canonical rewrite systems for congruence closures. They are particularly suited for integrating into the Satisfiability modulo Theories (SMT) solvers. A new way to view Groebner basis algorithm for polynomial ideals with integer coefficients as a combination of the congruence closures over the AC symbol * with the identity 1 and the congruence closure over an Abelian group with + is outlined.

4. A strong call-by-need calculus

Thibaut Balabonski ; Antoine Lanco ; Guillaume Melquiond.
We present a call-by-need $\lambda$-calculus that enables strong reduction (that is, reduction inside the body of abstractions) and guarantees that arguments are only evaluated if needed and at most once. This calculus uses explicit substitutions and subsumes the existing strong-call-by-need strategy, but allows for more reduction sequences, and often shorter ones, while preserving the neededness. The calculus is shown to be normalizing in a strong sense: Whenever a $\lambda$-term t admits a normal form n in the $\lambda$-calculus, then any reduction sequence from t in the calculus eventually reaches a representative of the normal form n. We also exhibit a restriction of this calculus that has the diamond property and that only performs reduction sequences of minimal length, which makes it systematically better than the existing strategy. We have used the Abella proof assistant to formalize part of this calculus, and discuss how this experiment affected its design. In particular, it led us to derive a new description of call-by-need reduction based on inductive rules.

5. On Small Types in Univalent Foundations

Tom de Jong ; Martín Hötzel Escardó.
We investigate predicative aspects of constructive univalent foundations. By predicative and constructive, we respectively mean that we do not assume Voevodsky's propositional resizing axioms or excluded middle. Our work complements existing work on predicative mathematics by exploring what cannot be done predicatively in univalent foundations. Our first main result is that nontrivial (directed or bounded) complete posets are necessarily large. That is, if such a nontrivial poset is small, then weak propositional resizing holds. It is possible to derive full propositional resizing if we strengthen nontriviality to positivity. The distinction between nontriviality and positivity is analogous to the distinction between nonemptiness and inhabitedness. Moreover, we prove that locally small, nontrivial (directed or bounded) complete posets necessarily lack decidable equality. We prove our results for a general class of posets, which includes e.g. directed complete posets, bounded complete posets, sup-lattices and frames. Secondly, the fact that these nontrivial posets are necessarily large has the important consequence that Tarski's theorem (and similar results) cannot be applied in nontrivial instances. Furthermore, we explain that generalizations of Tarski's theorem that allow for large structures are provably false by showing that the ordinal of ordinals in a univalent universe has small suprema in the presence of set quotients. The latter also leads us to […]

6. Enumerating Independent Linear Inferences

Anupam Das ; Alex Rice.
A linear inference is a valid inequality of Boolean algebra in which each variable occurs at most once on each side. In this work we leverage recently developed graphical representations of linear formulae to build an implementation that is capable of more efficiently searching for switch-medial-independent inferences. We use it to find four `minimal' 8-variable independent inferences and also prove that no smaller ones exist; in contrast, a previous approach based directly on formulae reached computational limits already at 7 variables. Two of these new inferences derive some previously found independent linear inferences. The other two (which are dual) exhibit structure seemingly beyond the scope of previous approaches we are aware of; in particular, their existence contradicts a conjecture of Das and Strassburger. We were also able to identify 10 minimal 9-variable linear inferences independent of all the aforementioned inferences, comprising 5 dual pairs, and present applications of our implementation to recent `graph logics'.