On lazy natural numbers with applications to computability theory and functional programming

  • Authors:
  • Martín Hötzel Escardó

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGACT News
  • Year:
  • 1993

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Abstract

Lazy natural numbers arise by lazy evaluation of the successor function. This work investigates fundamental mathematical properties of the domain L of lazy natural numbers, and presents applications to computability theory and functional programming. It is shown that certain functions on sets of natural numbers like cardinality-finding and emptyness-testing which are not continuous (or even monotonic) when sets are given by characteristic functions N⊥ → T are both continuous and computable when sets are given by characteristic functions L → T defined in an appropriate way. These functions are definable in λ calculus based functional programming languages provided some parallel features are available.