A program logic for fresh name generation

01/26/2021

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by   Harold Pancho Eliott, et al.

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We present a program logic for Pitts and Stark's ν-calculus, an extension of the call-by-value simply-typed λ-calculus with a mechanism for the generation of fresh names. Names can be compared for (in)-equality, producing programs with subtle observable properties. Hidden names produced by interactions between generation and abstraction are captured logically with a second-order quantifier over type contexts. We illustrate usage of the logic through reasoning about well-known difficult cases from the literature.