Towards Effects in Mathematical Operational Semantics

AbstractIn this paper, we study extensions of mathematical operational semantics with algebraic effects. Our starting point is an effect-free coalgebraic operational semantics, given by a natural transformation of syntax over behaviour. The operational semantics of the extended language arises by distributing program syntax over effects, again inducing a coalgebraic operational semantics, but this time in the Kleisli category for the monad derived from the algebraic effects. The final coalgebra in this Kleisli category then serves as the denotational model. For it to exist, we ensure that the the Kleisli category is enriched over CPOs by considering the monad of possibly infinite terms, extended with a bottom element.Unlike the effectless setting, not all operational specifications give rise to adequate and compositional semantics. We give a proof of adequacy and compositionality provided the specifications can be described by evaluation-in-context. We illustrate our techniques with a simple extension of (stateless) while programs with global store, i.e. variable lookup