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Lambda calculus consists of constructing lambda terms and performing reduction operations on them. A term is defined as any valid lambda calculus expression. In the simplest form of lambda calculus, terms are built using only the following rules: [a]: A variable is a character or string representing a parameter. (.
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 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.
A head normal form is a term that does not contain a beta redex in head position, i.e. that cannot be further reduced by a head reduction. When considering the simple lambda calculus (viz. without the addition of constant or function symbols, meant to be reduced by additional delta rule), head normal forms are the terms of the following shape:
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]
A rewriting system has the unique normal form property (UN) if for all normal forms a, b ∈ S, a can be reached from b by a series of rewrites and inverse rewrites only if a is equal to b. A rewriting system has the unique normal form property with respect to reduction (UN →) if for every term reducing to normal forms a and b, a is equal to ...
In the context of the lambda calculus, normal-order reduction refers to leftmost-outermost reduction in the sense given above. [10] Normal-order reduction is normalizing, in the sense that if a term has a normal form, then normal‐order reduction will eventually reach it, hence the name normal. This is known as the standardization theorem. [11 ...
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 ...