The Reversible Intermediate Language L4, its Type System, and its Bidirectional Small-Step Semantics

Torben Ægidius Mogensen

L4 is a generic, reversible, linearly-typed, low-level language intended as an intermediate language for compiling reversible programming languages to reversible machines. L4 is intended to replace and generalise RSSA, a reversible SSA form. Inspiration is drawn from other low-level reversible languages such as HSSA. In this paper, we define L4 first informally, and then give a formal type system and a bidirectional small-step semantics for L4: The rules have direction indicators to determine forwards or backwards execution, and the direction can be changed during execution.