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Lambdac

The purpose of this application is to provide user interfaces for interpreting source code written in untyped lambda calculus. It contains an interpreter that evaluates lambda expressions using the call-by-value evaluation strategy.

This application, named Lambdac, is written in Java. It currently can run as either a textual user interface or a graphical user interface, both of which can run files and text. The implementation is based on the book Types and Programming Languages (TaPL).

How to Build

To build, first clone this repository and then, inside it, run

mvn package

How to Run

To start the application after the build, run

java -cp target/project-lambdac-0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar ch.usi.pf2.Main

The following command line arguments are also supported, which can be appended to the above command:

  • --gui opens the graphical user interface instead of the default textual user interface
  • --help shows more information about the supported command line arguments
  • <filePath> interprets the content of a file and prints the result
  • -c <text> interprets the given text and prints the result

User Instructions

The lambda expressions that are written in this application must follow the following grammar:

TERM        ::= ATOM
              | ABSTRACTION
              | APPLICATION
ATOM        ::= IDENTIFIER
              | "(" TERM ")"
ABSTRACTION ::= "\" IDENTIFIER "." TERM
APPLICATION ::= ATOM ATOM
              | APPLICATION ATOM
IDENTIFIER  ::= [a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*

This means that an application is left associative (i.e. x y z is the same as (x y) z) and an abstraction extends as far to the right as possible (i.e. \x.x x is the same as \x.(x x) but not (\x.x) x).

Examples

Examples of lambda expressions that follow the above grammar are shown below:

(\x.x x) (\y.y)
(\b.\c.b c (\t.\f.f)) (\t.\f.t) (\t.\f.f)              # and true false
(\l.\m.\n.l m n) (\t.\f.f) (\x.x) (\y.y)               # ifthenelse false (\x.x) (\y.y)
(\n.\s.\z.s (n s z)) (\s.\z.s z)                       # succ 1
(\m.\n.\s.\z.m s (n s z)) (\s.\z.s z) (\s.\z.s (s z))  # plus 1 2

Features to Add

Patterns

  • Allow undo and redo operations using the command pattern.
  • Use the MVC architecture pattern.

Evaluation

  • Allow evaluation using different strategies (applicative order, normal order, call-by-value, and call-by-name).
  • Allow step-by-step evaluation.

User Experience

  • Add a REPL to the GUI.
  • Add more details to parse exceptions, such as start and end positions.

Environment

  • Allow variables to be added to the environment with let.
  • Add default environment variables, such as the ones in section 5.2 in TaPL.
  • Determine if an evaluated expression is behaviorally equivalent to environment variables.

Other

  • See last paragraph of section 7.1 in TaPL.
  • See second to last paragraph of section 7.2 in TaPL.