Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Static Cost Analysis For A Higher-Order Language, Norman Danner, Jennifer Paykin, James Royer

Norman Danner

We develop a static complexity analysis for a higher-order functional language with structural list recursion. The complexity of an expression is a pair consisting of a cost and a potential. The former is defined to be the size of the expression's evaluation derivation in a standard big-step operational semantics. The latter is a measure of the "future" cost of using the value of that expression. A translation function ||.|| maps target expressions to complexities. Our main result is the following Soundness Theorem: If t is a term in the target language, then the cost component of ||t|| is an upper …