What is a 'Good' Encoding of Guarded Choice?

AbstractThe π-calculus with synchronous output and mixed-guarded choices is strictly more expressive than the π-calculus with asynchronous output and no choice. As a corollary, Palamidessi recently proved that there is no fully compositional encoding from the former into the latter that preserves divergence-freedom and symmetries. This paper shows that there are nevertheless 'good' encodings between these calculi.In detail, we present a series of encodings for languages with (1) input-guarded choice, (2) both input- and output-guarded choice, and (3) mixed-guarded choice, and investigate them with respect to compositionality and divergence-freedom. The first and second encoding satisfy all criteria, but various 'good' candidates for the third encoding—inspired by an existing distributed implementation—invalidate one or the other criterion. While essentially confirming Palamidessi's result, our study suggests that the combination of strong compositionality and divergence-freedom is too strong for more practical purposes