Subtyping appears in a variety of programming languages, in the form of the ‘automatic coercion’ of integers to reals, Pascal subranges, and subtypes arising from class hierarchies in languages with inheritance. A general framework based on untyped lambda calculus provides a simple semantic model of subtyping and is used to demonstrate that an extension of Curry's type inference rules are semantically complete. An algorithm G for computing the most general typing associated with any given expression, and a restricted, optimized algorithm GA using only atomic subtyping hypotheses are developed. Both algorithms may be extended to insert type conversion functions at compile time or allow polymorphic function declarations as in ML.

Traditionally the view has been that direct expression of control and store mechanisms and clear mathematical semantics are incompatible requirements. This paper shows that adding objects with memory to the call-by-value lambda calculus results in a language with a rich equational theory, satisfying many of the usual laws. Combined with other recent work, this provides evidence that expressive, mathematically clean programming languages are indeed possible.

The evaluation transformer model of reduction generalizes lazy evaluation in two ways: it can start the evaluation of expressions before their first use, and it can evaluate expressions further than weak head normal form. Moreover, the amount of evaluation required of an argument to a function may depend on the amount of evaluation required of the function application. It is a suitable candidate model for implementing lazy functional languages on parallel machines.

In this paper we explore the implementation of lazy functional languages on parallel machines, both shared and distributed memory architectures, using the evaluation transformer model of reduction. We will see that the same code can be produced for both styles of architecture, and the definition of the instruction set is virtually the same for each style. The essential difference is that a distributed memory architecture has one extra node type for non-local pointers, and instructions which involve the value of such nodes need their definitions extended to cover this new type of node.

To make our presentation accessible, we base our description on a variant of the well-known G-machine, an abstract machine for executing lazy functional programs.

For numeral systems in untyped λ-calculus the definability of a successor, a predecessor and a test for zero implies the definability of all recursive functions on that system. Towards a disproof of the converse statement, H. P. Barendregt and the author constructed a numeral system consisting of unsolvable λ-terms, being adequate for unary functions. Then, independently, B. Intrigila found an analogous system for all computable functions.