An indexed model of recursive types for foundational proof-carrying code

  • Authors:

  • Andrew W. Appel;David McAllester

  • Affiliations:

  • Princeton University, Princeton, NJ;AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, NJ

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

The proofs of "traditional" proof carrying code (PCC) are type-specialized in the sense that they require axioms about a specific type system. In contrast, the proofs of foundational PCC explicitly define all required types and explicitly prove all the required properties of those types assuming only a fixed foundation of mathematics such as higher-order logic. Foundational PCC is both more flexible and more secure than type-specialized PCC.For foundational PCC we need semantic models of type systems on von Neumann machines. Previous models have been either too weak (lacking general recursive types and first-class function-pointers), too complex (requiring machine-checkable proofs of large bodies of computability theory), or not obviously applicable to von Neumann machines. Our new model is strong, simple, and works either in λ-calculus or on Pentiums.