Weirich, Stephanie

Profile Picture
Email Address
ORCID
Disciplines
Programming Languages and Compilers
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Position
Professor
Introduction
Research Interests
Functional Programming
Type Systems

Filters

2000 - 2009172010 - 201519
36
19125
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 36
  • Publication
    Boxes Go Bananas: Encoding Higher-Order Abstract Syntax With Parametric Polymorphism (Extended Version)
    (2003-09-20) Washburn, Geoffrey; Weirich, Stephanie
    Higher-order abstract syntax is a simple technique for implementing languages with functional programming. Object variables and binders are implemented by variables and binders in the host language. By using this technique, one can avoid implementing common and tricky routines dealing with variables, such as capture-avoiding substitution. However, despite the advantages this technique provides, it is not commonly used because it is difficult to write sound elimination forms (such as folds or catamorphisms) for higher-order abstract syntax. To fold over such a datatype, one must either simultaneously define an inverse operation (which may not exist) or show that all functions embedded in the datatype are parametric. In this paper, we show how first-class polymorphism can be used to guarantee the parametricity of functions embedded in higher-order abstract syntax. With this restriction, we implement a library of iteration operators over data-structures containing functionals. From this implementation, we derive "fusion laws" that functional programmers may use to reason about the iteration operator. Finally, we show how this use of parametric polymorphism corresponds to the Schürmann, Despeyroux and Pfenning method of enforcing parametricity through modal types. We do so by using this library to give a sound and complete encoding of their calculus into System Fω. This encoding can serve as a starting point for reasoning about higher-order structures in polymorphic languages.
  • Publication
    Termination Casts: A Flexible Approach to Termination With General Recursion (Technical Appendix)
    (2010-01-01) Stump, Aaron; Sjoberg, Vilhelm; Weirich, Stephanie
    This paper proposes a type-and-effect system called Teq↓, which distinguishes terminating terms and total functions from possibly diverging terms and partial functions, for a lambda calculus with general recursion and equality types. The central idea is to include a primitive type-form "Terminates t", expressing that term t is terminating; and then allow terms t to be coerced from possibly diverging to total, using a proof of Terminates t. We call such coercions termination casts, and show how to implement terminating recursion using them. For the meta-theory of the system, we describe a translation from Teq↓ to a logical theory of termination for general recursive, simply typed functions. Every typing judgment of Teq↓ is translated to a theorem expressing the appropriate termination property of the computational part of the Teq↓ term.
  • Publication
    LNgen: Tool Support for Locally Nameless Representations
    (2010-06-01) Aydemir, Brian; Weirich, Stephanie
    Given the complexity of the metatheoretic reasoning about current programming languages and their type systems, techniques for mechanical formalization and checking of such metatheory have received much recent attention. In previous work, we advocated a combination of locally nameless representation and cofinite quantification as a lightweight style for carrying out such formalizations in the Coq proof assistant. As part of the presentation of that methodology, we described a number of operations associated with variable binding and listed a number of properties, called “infrastructure lemmas”, about those operations that needed to be shown. The proofs of these infrastructure lemmas are straightforward but tedious. In this work, we present LNgen, a prototype tool for automatically generating statements and proofs of infrastructure lemmas from Ott language specifications. Furthermore, the tool also generates a recursion scheme for defining functions over syntax, which was not available in our previous work. LNgen works in concert with Ott to effectively alleviate much of the tedium of working with locally nameless syntax. For the case of untyped lambda terms, we show that the combined output from the two tools is sound and complete, with LNgen automatically proving many of the key lemmas. We prove the soundness of our representation with respect to a fully concrete representation, and we argue that the representation is complete—that we generate the right set of lemmas—with respect to Gordon and Melham’s “Five Axioms of Alpha-Conversion.”
  • Publication
    Verified ROS-Based Deployment of Platform-Independent Control Systems
    (2015-04-27) Park, Junkil; Sokolsky, Oleg; Weirich, Stephanie; Meng, Wenrui; Lee, Insup
    The paper considers the problem of model-based deployment of platform-independent control code on a specific platform. The approach is based on automatic generation of platform-specific glue code from an architectural model of the system. We present a tool, ROSGen, that generates the glue code based on a declarative specification of platform interfaces. Our implementation targets the popular Robot Operating System (ROS) platform. We demonstrate that the code generation process is amenable to formal verification. The code generator is implemented in Coq and relies on the infrastructure provided by the CompCert and VST tool. We prove that the generated code always correctly connects the controller function to sensors and actuators in the robot. We use ROSGen to implement a cruise control system on the LandShark robot.
  • Publication
    PolyAML: A Polymorphic Aspect-Oriented Functional Programming Language (Extended Version)
    (2005-05-01) Dantas, Daniel S; Walker, David; Washburn, Geoffrey; Weirich, Stephanie C
    This paper defines PolyAML, a typed functional, aspect-oriented programming language. The main contribution of PolyAML is the seamless integration of polymorphism, run-time type analysis and aspect-oriented programming language features. In particular, PolyAML allows programmers to define type-safe polymorphic advice using pointcuts constructed from a collection of polymorphic join points. PolyAML also comes equipped with a type inference algorithm that conservatively extends Hindley-Milner type inference. To support first-class polymorphic point-cut designators, a crucial feature for developing aspect-oriented profiling or logging libraries, the algorithm blends the conventional Hindley-Milner type inference algorithm with a simple form of local type inference. We give our language operational meaning via a type-directed translation into an expressive type-safe intermediate language. Many complexities of the source language are eliminated in this translation, leading to a modular specification of its semantics. One of the novelties of the intermediate language is the definition of polymorphic labels for marking control-flow points. These labels are organized in a tree structure such that a parent in the tree serves as a representative for all of its children. Type safety requires that the type of each child is less polymorphic than its parent type. Similarly, when a set of labels is assembled as a pointcut, the type of each label is an instance of the type of the pointcut.
  • Publication
    Practical Type Inference for Arbitrary-Rank Types: Technical Appendix
    (2005-09-27) Vytiniotis, Dimitrios; Weirich, Stephanie C; Peyton Jones, Simon
  • Publication
    Contracts Made Manifest
    (2010-01-17) Pierce, Benjamin C; Greenberg, Michael; Weirich, Stephanie
    Since Findler and Felleisen introduced higher-order contracts, many variants have been proposed. Broadly, these fall into two groups: some follow Findler and Felleisen in using latent contracts, purely dynamic checks that are transparent to the type system; others use manifest contracts, where refinement types record the most recent check that has been applied to each value. These two approaches are commonly assumed to be equivalent-different ways of implementing the same idea, one retaining a simple type system, and the other providing more static information. Our goal is to formalize and clarify this folklore understanding. Our work extends that of Gronski and Flanagan, who defined a latent calculus lambdac and a manifest calculus lambdah, gave a translation phi from lambdac to lambdah, and proved that, if a lambdac term reduces to a constant, then so does its phiimage. We enrich their account with a translation psi from lambdah to lambdac and prove an analogous theorem. We then generalize the whole framework to dependent contracts, whose predicates can mention free variables. This extension is both pragmatically crucial, supporting a much more interesting range of contracts, and theoretically challenging. We define dependent versions of lambdah and two dialects (“lax” and “picky”) of lambdac, establish type soundness-a substantial result in itself, for lambdah-and extend phi and psi accordingly. Surprisingly, the intuition that the latent and manifest systems are equivalent now breaks down: the extended translations preserve behavior in one direction but, in the other, sometimes yield terms that blame more.
  • Publication
    Contracts Made Manifest
    (2012-05-01) Pierce, Benjamin C; Greenberg, Michael; Weirich, Stephanie
    Since Findler and Felleisen (Findler, R. B. & Felleisen, M. 2002) introduced higher-order contracts, many variants have been proposed. Broadly, these fall into two groups: some follow Findler and Felleisen (2002) in using latent contracts, purely dynamic checks that are transparent to the type system; others use manifest contracts, where refinement types record the most recent check that has been applied to each value. These two approaches are commonly assumed to be equivalent—different ways of implementing the same idea, one retaining a simple type system, and the other providing more static information. Our goal is to formalize and clarify this folklore understanding. Our work extends that of Gronski and Flanagan (Gronski, J. & Flanagan, C. 2007), who defined a latent calculus λC and a manifest calculus λH, gave a translation φ from λC to λH, and proved that if a λC term reduces to a constant, so does its φ-image. We enrich their account with a translation ψ from λH to λC and prove an analogous theorem. We then generalize the whole framework to dependent contracts, whose predicates can mention free variables. This extension is both pragmatically crucial, supporting a much more interesting range of contracts, and theoretically challenging. We define dependent versions of λH and two dialects (“lax” and “picky”) of λC, establish type soundness—a substantial result in itself, for λH — and extend φ and ψ accordingly. Surprisingly, the intuition that the latent and manifest systems are equivalent now breaks down: the extended translations preserve behavior in one direction, but in the other, sometimes yield terms that blame more.
  • Publication
    FPH: First-class Polymorphism for Haskell Declarative, Constraint-free Type Inference for Impredicative Polymorphism
    (2008-09-22) Vytiniotis, Dimitrios; Weirich, Stephanie; Peyton Jones, Simon
    Languages supporting polymorphism typically have ad-hoc restrictions on where polymorphic types may occur. Supporting "first class" polymorphism, by lifting those restrictions, is obviously desirable, but it is hard to achieve this without sacrificing type inference. We present a new type system for higher-rank and impredicative polymorphism that improves on earlier proposals: it is an extension of Damas-Milner; it relies only on System F types; it has a simple, declarative specification; it is robust to program transformations; and it enjoys a complete and decidable type inference algorithm.
  • Publication
    A Design for Type-Directed Programming in Java
    (2005-11-23) Weirich, Stephanie C; Huang, Liang
    Type-directed programming is an important and widely used paradigm in the design of software. With this form of programming, an application may analyze type information to determine its behavior. By analyzing the structure of data, many operations, such as serialization, cloning, adaptors and iterators may be defined once, for all types of data. That way, as the program evolves, these operations need not be updated—they will automatically adapt to new data forms. Otherwise, each of these operations must be individually redefined for each type of data, forcing programmers to revisit the same program logic many times during a program’s lifetime. The Java language supports type directed programming with the instanceof operator and the Java Reflection API. These mechanisms allow Java programs to depend on the name and structure of the run-time classes of objects. However, the Java mechanisms for type-directed programming are difficult to use. They also do not integrate well with generics, an important new feature of the Java language. In this paper, we describe the design of several expressive new mechanisms for type-directed programming in Java, and show that these mechanisms are sound when included in a language similar to Featherweight Java. Basically, these new mechanisms pattern-match the name and structure of the type parameters of generic code, instead of the run-time classes of objects. Therefore, they naturally integrate with generics and provide strong guarantess about program correctness. As these mechanisms are based on pattern matching, they naturally and succinctly express many operations that depend on type information. Finally, they provide programmers with some degree of protection for their abstractions. Whereas instanceof and reflection can determine the exact run-time type of an object, our mechanisms allow any supertype to be supplied for analysis, hiding its precise structure from others.