Towards Machine-checked Compiler Correctness for Higher-order Pure Functional Languages

. In this paper we show that the critical part of a correctness proof for implementations of higher--order functional languages is amenable to machine--assisted proof. An extended version of the lambdacalculus is considered, and the congruence between its direct and continuation semantics is proved. The proof has been constructed with the help of a generic theorem prover --- Isabelle. The major part of the problem lies in establishing the existence of predicates which describe the congruence. This has been solved using Milne's inclusive predicate strategy [5]. The most important intermediate results and the main theorem as derived by Isabelle are quoted in the paper. Keywords: Compiler Correctness, Theorem Prover, Congruence Proof, Denotational Semantics, Lambda Calculus 1 Introduction Much of the work done previously in compiler correctness concerns restricted subsets of imperative languages. Some studies involve machine--checked correctness---e.g. Cohn [1], [2]. A lot of research h..