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Linear Continuation-Passing

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Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

Continuations can be used to explain a wide variety of control behaviours, including calling/returning (procedures), raising/handling (exceptions), labelled jumping (goto statements), process switching (coroutines), and backtracking. However, continuations are often manipulated in a highly stylised way, and we show that all of these, bar backtracking, in fact use their continuations linearly; this is formalised by taking a target language for CPS transforms that has both intuitionistic and linear function types.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom

    Josh Berdine & Peter O'Hearn

  2. School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom

    Uday Reddy & Hayo Thielecke

Authors
  1. Josh Berdine
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  2. Peter O'Hearn
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  3. Uday Reddy
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  4. Hayo Thielecke
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Berdine, J., O'Hearn, P., Reddy, U. et al. Linear Continuation-Passing. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 15, 181–208 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020891112409

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