Person. Nick Benton

Papers

Integrating Linear and Dependent Types krishnaswami_integrating_2015

In this paper, we show how to integrate linear types with type dependency, by extending the linear/non-linear calculus of Benton to support type dependency.
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Higher-order functional reactive programming in bounded space krishnaswami-2012-higher

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Simple relational correctness proofs for static analyses and program transformations benton_relational_2004

We show how some classical static analyses for imperative programs, and the optimizing transformations which they enable, may be expressed and proved correct using elementary logical and denotational techniques. The key ingredients are an interpretation of program properties as relations, rather than predicates, and a realization that although many program analyses are traditionally formulated in very intensional terms, the associated transformations are actually enabled by more liberal extensional properties. We illustrate our approach with formal systems for analysing and transforming while-programs. The first is a simple type system which tracks constancy and dependency information and can be used to perform dead-code elimination, constant propagation and program slicing as well as capturing a form of secure information flow. The second is a relational version of Hoare logic, which significantly generalizes our first type system and can also justify optimizations including hoisting loop invariants. Finally we show how a simple available expression analysis and redundancy elimination transformation may be justified by translation into relational Hoare logic.
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A mixed linear and non-linear logic: Proofs, terms and models: Extended abstract bentonMixedLinearNonlinear1995

Intuitionistic linear logic regains the expressive power of intuitionistic logic through the ! (‘of course’) modality. Benton, Bierman, Hyland and de Paiva have given a term assignment system for ILL and an associated notion of categorical model in which the ! modality is modelled by a comonad satisfying certain extra conditions. Ordinary intuitionistic logic is then modelled in a cartesian closed category which arises as a full subcategory of the category of coalgebras for the comonad. This paper attempts to explain the connection between ILL and IL more directly and symmetrically by giving a logic, term calculus and categorical model for a system in which the linear and non-linear worlds exist on an equal footing, with operations allowing one to pass in both directions. We start from the categorical model of ILL given by Benton, Bierman, Hyland and de Paiva and show that this is equivalent to having a symmetric monoidal adjunction between a symmetric monoidal closed category and a cartesian closed category. We then derive both a sequent calculus and a natural deduction presentation of the logic corresponding to the new notion of model.
DOI
nickbenton person entries/rolodex/nickbenton.hel