Papers › A robust graph-based approach to observational equivalence

A robust graph-based approach to observational equivalence

2 Jul 2019arXiv:1907.01257links table onlyarchive 2025-07-28

Dan R. Ghica, Koko Muroya, Todd Waugh Ambridge

The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.

We propose a new step-wise approach to proving observational equivalence, and in particular reasoning about fragility of observational equivalence. Our approach is based on what we call local reasoning. The local reasoning exploits the graphical concept of neighbourhood, and it extracts a new, formal, concept of robustness as a key sufficient condition of observational equivalence. Moreover, our proof methodology is capable of proving a generalised notion of observational equivalence. The generalised notion can be quantified over syntactically restricted contexts instead of all contexts, and also quantitatively constrained in terms of the number of reduction steps. The operational machinery we use is given by a hypergraph-rewriting abstract machine inspired by Girard's Geometry of Interaction. The behaviour of language features, including function abstraction and application, is provided by hypergraph-rewriting rules. We demonstrate our proof methodology using the call-by-value lambda-calculus equipped with (higher-order) state.

PaperPDFCode

Code

sd-visualiser/sd-visualiser mentioned on GitHub report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections