Abductive functional programming, a semantic approach

10/11/2017

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by   Koko Muroya, et al.

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We propose a call-by-value lambda calculus extended with a new construct inspired by abductive inference and motivated by the programming idioms of machine learning. Although syntactically simple the abductive construct has a complex and subtle operational semantics which we express using a style based on the Geometry of Interaction. We show that the calculus is sound, in the sense that well typed programs terminate normally. We also give a visual implementation of the semantics which relies on additional garbage collection rules, which we also prove sound.