> In Haskell what roles are played by 1)lambda calculus and 2) equational > logic? Are these roles related?
Hi, Thanks for your clear and helpful responses. I am aware that this question can lead to into very deep water. I am comparing Haskell with languages based on equational logic (EL) (e.g. Maude/CafeOBJ, lets call them ELLs). I need to identify the fundamental distinction between the semantics of ELLs and Haskell. The focus of my original question was just the purely functional, side effect free, part of Haskell. Semantics can be understood under three headings: *Denotational Semantics; is a model theoretical approach which describes a program in terms of precise mathematical objects (e.g. sets and functions) which provide meaning to a program text. *Operational semantics: provides a technique for computing a result, ELs use term rewriting systems for their operational semantics. *Proof theoretic semantic: syntactically derivable proofs, can use the rules of a logic The relationship between the denotational and the proof theoretic semantic is important for soundness and completeness. Which was sort of behind my original question. Would it be fair to say 1)Lambda calculus provides the operational semantics for Haskell 2)Maybe equational logic provides the denotational semantics. 3)I am not sure of proof theoretic semantic for Haskell. The Curry-Howard correspondence is a proof theoretic view but only at type level. Obviously, the last three points are represent my efforts to address this question. Hopefully the café can comment on the accuracy of these points. Thanks, Pat This message has been scanned for content and viruses by the DIT Information Services E-Mail Scanning Service, and is believed to be clean. http://www.dit.ie _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
