Observational equivalence of 3rd-order Idealized Algol is decidable

We prove that observational equivalence of 3rd-order finitary Idealized Algol (IA) is decidable using Game Semantics. By modelling state explicitly in our games, we show that the denotation of a term M of this fragment of IA (built up from finite base types) is a compactly innocent strategy-with-state i.e. the strategy is generated by a finite view function f/sub M/. Given any such f/sub M/, we construct a real-time deterministic pushdown automata (DPDA) that recognizes the complete plays of the knowing-strategy denotation of M. Since such plays characterize observational equivalence, and there is an algorithm for deciding whether any two DPDAs recognize the same language, we obtain a procedure for deciding observational equivalence of 3rd-order finitary IA. This algorithmic representation of program meanings, which is compositional, provides a foundation for model-checking a wide range of behavioural properties of IA and other cognate programming languages. Another result concerns 2nd-order IA with recursion: we show that observational equivalence for this fragment is undecidable.