A theory of reversibility for Erlang

Ivan Lanese (1) , Naoki Nishida (2) , Adrian Palacios (3) , Germán Vidal (3)

1 FOCUS - Foundations of Component-based Ubiquitous Systems
2 Nagoya University
3 UPV - Universitat Politècnica de València = Universitad Politecnica de Valencia = Polytechnic University of Valencia

In a reversible language, any forward computation can be undone by a finite sequence of backward steps. Reversible computing has been studied in the context of different programming languages and formalisms, where it has been used for testing and verification, among others. In this paper, we consider a subset of Erlang, a functional and concurrent programming language based on the actor model. We present a formal semantics for reversible computation in this language and prove its main properties, including its causal consistency. We also build on top of it a rollback operator that can be used to undo the actions of a process up to a given checkpoint.

Mots clés: reversible computation; actor model; concurrency; rollback recovery $

Domaines: Langage de programmation [cs.PL]; Théorie et langage formel [cs.FL]

Ivan Lanese, Naoki Nishida, Adrian Palacios, Germán Vidal. A theory of reversibility for Erlang. Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming, 2018, 100, pp.71 - 97. ⟨10.1016/j.jlamp.2018.06.004⟩. ⟨hal-01912856⟩