Last issue of MSCS before moving to continuous publishing (first part of a collection devoted to LSFA 2021 and 2022).

Although reasoning about equations over strings has been extensively studied for several decades, little research has been done for equational reasoning on general clauses over strings. This paper introduces a new superposition calculus with strings and present an equational theorem proving framework for clauses over strings. It provides a saturation procedure for clauses over strings and show that the proposed superposition calculus with contraction rules is refutationally complete. In particular, this paper presents a new decision procedure for solving word problems over strings and provides a new method of solving unification problems over strings w.r.t. a set of conditional equations R over strings if R can be finitely saturated under the proposed inference system with contraction rules.

Generalized Algebraic Data Types (GADTs) are a syntactic generalization of the usual algebraic data types (ADTs), such as lists, trees, etc. ADTs’ standard initial algebra semantics (IAS) in the category $\mathit{Set}$ of sets justify critical syntactic constructs – such as recursion, pattern matching, and fold – for programming with them. In this paper, we show that semantics for GADTs that specialize to the IAS for ADTs are necessarily unsatisfactory. First, we show that the functorial nature of such semantics for GADTs in $\mathit{Set}$ introduces ghost elements, i.e., elements not writable in syntax. Next, we show how such ghost elements break parametricity. We observe that the situation for GADTs contrasts dramatically with that for ADTs, whose IAS coincides with the parametric model constructed via their Church encodings in System F. Our analysis reveals that the fundamental obstacle to giving a functorial IAS for GADTs is the inherently partial nature of their map functions. We show that this obstacle cannot be overcome by replacing $\mathit{Set}$ with other categories that account for this partiality.

We present a linearity theorem for a proof language of intuitionistic multiplicative additive linear logic, incorporating addition and scalar multiplication. The proofs in this language are linear in the algebraic sense. This work is part of a broader research program aiming to define a logic with a proof language that forms a quantum programming language.

Perfect paradefinite algebras are De Morgan algebras expanded with an operation that allows for the full behavior of classical negation to be restored. They form a variety that is term-equivalent to the variety of involutive Stone algebras. Their associated multiple-conclusion (Set-Set) and single-conclusion () order-preserving logics are non-algebraizable self-extensional logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness determined by a six-valued matrix. We studied these logics extensively in Gomes et al. ((2022). Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 357 56–76.) from both the algebraic and the proof-theoretical perspectives. In the present paper, we continue that study by investigating directions for conservatively expanding these logics with an implication connective (essentially, one that admits the deduction-detachment theorem). We first consider logics given by very simple and manageable non-deterministic semantics whose implication (in isolation) is classical. These, nevertheless, fail to be self-extensional. We then consider the implication realized by the relative pseudo-complement over the six-valued perfect paradefinite algebra. Our strategy is to expand the language of the latter algebra with this connective and study the (self-extensional) Set-Set and order-preserving and $\top$-assertional logics of the variety induced by the resulting algebra. We provide axiomatizations for such new variety and for such logics, drawing parallels with the class of symmetric Heyting algebras and with Moisil’s “symmetric modal logic.” For the order-preserving Set-Set logic, in particular, we obtain a Set-Set axiomatization that is analytic. We close by studying interpolation properties for these logics and concluding that the new variety has the Maehara amalgamation property.