On bunched typing

• Authors: Peter O'hearn
• Venue: Journal of Functional Programming
• Year: 2003

We study a typing scheme derived from a semantic situation where a single category possesses several closed structures, corresponding to different varieties of function type. In this scheme typing contexts are trees built from two (or more) binary combining operations, or in short, bunches. Bunched typing and its logical counterpart, bunched implications, have arisen in joint work of the author and David Pym. The present paper gives a basic account of the type system, and then focusses on concrete models that illustrate how it may be understood in terms of resource access and sharing. The most basic system has two context-combining operations, and the structural rules of Weakening and Contraction are allowed for one but not the other. This system includes a multiplicative, or substructural, function type −∗ alongside the usual (additive) function type $\rightarrow$; it is dubbed the $\alpha\lambda$-calculus after its binders, $\alpha$ for the $\alpha$dditive binder and $\lambda$ for the multiplicative, or $\lambda$inear, binder. We show that the features of this system are, in a sense, complementary to calculi based on linear logic; it is incompatible with an interpretation where a multiplicative function uses its argument once, but perfectly compatible with a reading based on sharing of resources. This sharing interpretation is derived from syntactic control of interference, a type-theoretic method of controlling sharing of storage, and we show how bunch-based management of Contraction can be used to provide a more flexible type system for interference control.