Towards a ML Extension with Refinement: a Semantic Issue

Refinement is a method to derive correct programs from specifications. A rich type language is another way to ensure program correctness. In this paper, we propose a wide-spectrum language mixing both approaches for the ML language. Mainly, base types are simply included into expressions, introducing underdeterminism and dependent types. We focus on the semantic aspects of such a language. We study three different semantics: a denotational, a deterministic operational and a nondeterministic operational semantics. We prove their equivalence. We show that this language is a conservative extension of ML.