Preciseness of subtyping on intersection and union types

Abstract

The notion of subtyping has gained an important role both in theoretical and applicative domains: in lambda and concurrent calculi as well as in programming languages. The soundness and the completeness, together referred to as the preciseness of subtyping, can be considered from two different points of view: denotational and operational. The former preciseness is based on the denotation of a type which is a mathematical object that describes the meaning of the type in accordance with the denotations of other expressions from the language. The latter preciseness has been recently developed with respect to type safety, i.e. the safe replacement of a term of a smaller type when a term of a bigger type is expected. We propose a technique for formalising and proving operational preciseness of the subtyping relation in the setting of a concurrent lambda calculus with intersection and union types. The key feature is the link between typings and the operational semantics. We then prove soundness and completeness getting that the subtyping relation of this calculus enjoys both denotational and operational preciseness. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.