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Lambda calculus is Turing complete, that is, it is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine. [3] Its namesake, the Greek letter lambda (λ), is used in lambda expressions and lambda terms to denote binding a variable in a function.
Such an essentially semantic, reduction-free, approach differs from the more traditional syntactic, reduction-based, description of normalisation as reductions in a term rewrite system where β-reductions are allowed deep inside λ-terms. NBE was first described for the simply typed lambda calculus. [1]
In computer science, lambda calculi are said to have explicit substitutions if they pay special attention to the formalization of the process of substitution.This is in contrast to the standard lambda calculus where substitutions are performed by beta reductions in an implicit manner which is not expressed within the calculus; the "freshness" conditions in such implicit calculi are a notorious ...
Optimal reduction is not a reduction strategy for the lambda calculus in a narrow sense because performing β-reduction loses the information about the substituted redexes being shared. Instead it is defined for the labelled lambda calculus, an annotated lambda calculus which captures a precise notion of the work that should be shared.
A head normal form is a term of the lambda calculus which is not a head redex. [a] A head reduction is a (non empty) sequence of contractions of a term which contracts head redexes. A head reduction of a term t (which is supposed not to be in head normal form) is a head reduction which starts from a term t and ends on a head normal form. From ...
The purpose of β-reduction is to calculate a value. A value in lambda calculus is a function. So β-reduction continues until the expression looks like a function abstraction. A lambda expression that cannot be reduced further, by either β-redex, or η-redex is in normal form. Note that alpha-conversion may convert functions.
Viewing the lambda calculus as an abstract rewriting system, the Church–Rosser theorem states that the reduction rules of the lambda calculus are confluent. As a consequence of the theorem, a term in the lambda calculus has at most one normal form, justifying reference to "the normal form" of a given normalizable term.
The Y combinator is an implementation of a fixed-point combinator in lambda calculus. Fixed-point combinators may also be easily defined in other functional and imperative languages. The implementation in lambda calculus is more difficult due to limitations in lambda calculus. The fixed-point combinator may be used in a number of different areas: