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Using a Continuation Twice and Its Implications for the Expressive Power of call/cc

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Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

We study the implications for the expressive power of call/cc of upward continuations, specifically the idiom of using a continuation twice. Although such control effects were known to Landin and Reynolds when they invented J and escape, the forebears of call/cc, they still act as a conceptual pitfall for some attempts to reason about continuations. We use this idiom to refute some recent conjectures about equivalences in a language with continuations, but no other effects. This shows that first-class continuations as given by call/cc have greater expressive power than one would expect from goto or exits.

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  1. Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, UK

    Hayo Thielecke

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  1. Hayo Thielecke
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Thielecke, H. Using a Continuation Twice and Its Implications for the Expressive Power of call/cc. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 12, 47–73 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010068800499

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