[Next]  [Previous]  [Up]  

Problem # 6

Submitted by Richard Statman
Date: 1993
Statement. Basis Decision Problem.


[PRINT this PROBLEM]

The basis decision problem, originally stated in [Statman, 1993], is to decide whether a given finite set of proper combinators is combinatorially complete. (A proper combinator [Barendregt, 1984, p. 184] is one of the form λ ⃗x.M  , where M  contains no lambda, and F V (M  ) ⊆ ⃗x  .) It follows from Theorem 4 in [Statman, 1986] that the problem is undecidable for finite sets of normal (possibly improper) combinators. A good solution would be an abstraction algorithm, parameterized by a given set of combinators, which returned an error message on non-bases. Broda and Damas have proved that in the linear case the problem is decidable [Broda and Damas, 1997].

References for # 6

[Barendregt, 1984]    Barendregt, H. (1984). The Lambda Calculus. Its Syntax and Semantics. North-Holland, second edition.

[Broda and Damas, 1997]    Broda, S. and Damas, L. (1997). On combinatory complete sets of proper combinators. Journal of Functional Programming, 7(6):593–612.

[Statman, 1986]    Statman, R. (1986). On translating lambda terms into combinators. In Logic in Computer Science, pages 378–382. IEEE Computer Society Press.

[Statman, 1993]    Statman, R. (1993). Some examples of non-existent combinators. Theoretical Computer Science, 121:441–448.


[Next]  [Previous]  [Up]  
© 2006 Dip. Informatica - Universita di Torino
Last modified: July 21, 2014