Programming Languages and Operational Semantics

Programming Languages and Operational Semantics
Author: Maribel Fernández
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1447163680

This book provides an introduction to the essential concepts in programming languages, using operational semantics techniques. It presents alternative programming language paradigms and gives an in-depth analysis of the most significant constructs in modern imperative, functional and logic programming languages. The book is designed to accompany lectures on programming language design for undergraduate students. Each chapter includes exercises which provide the opportunity to apply the concepts and techniques presented.

The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages

The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages
Author: Glynn Winskel
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1993-02-05
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262731034

The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages provides the basic mathematical techniques necessary for those who are beginning a study of the semantics and logics of programming languages. These techniques will allow students to invent, formalize, and justify rules with which to reason about a variety of programming languages. Although the treatment is elementary, several of the topics covered are drawn from recent research, including the vital area of concurency. The book contains many exercises ranging from simple to miniprojects.Starting with basic set theory, structural operational semantics is introduced as a way to define the meaning of programming languages along with associated proof techniques. Denotational and axiomatic semantics are illustrated on a simple language of while-programs, and fall proofs are given of the equivalence of the operational and denotational semantics and soundness and relative completeness of the axiomatic semantics. A proof of Godel's incompleteness theorem, which emphasizes the impossibility of achieving a fully complete axiomatic semantics, is included. It is supported by an appendix providing an introduction to the theory of computability based on while-programs. Following a presentation of domain theory, the semantics and methods of proof for several functional languages are treated. The simplest language is that of recursion equations with both call-by-value and call-by-name evaluation. This work is extended to lan guages with higher and recursive types, including a treatment of the eager and lazy lambda-calculi. Throughout, the relationship between denotational and operational semantics is stressed, and the proofs of the correspondence between the operation and denotational semantics are provided. The treatment of recursive types - one of the more advanced parts of the book - relies on the use of information systems to represent domains. The book concludes with a chapter on parallel programming languages, accompanied by a discussion of methods for specifying and verifying nondeterministic and parallel programs.

Semantics of Programming Languages

Semantics of Programming Languages
Author: Carl A. Gunter
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 1992
Genre: Programming languages (Electronic computers)
ISBN: 9780262570954

Semantics of Programming Languages exposes the basic motivations and philosophy underlying the applications of semantic techniques in computer science. It introduces the mathematical theory of programming languages with an emphasis on higher-order functions and type systems. Designed as a text for upper-level and graduate-level students, the mathematically sophisticated approach will also prove useful to professionals who want an easily referenced description of fundamental results and calculi. Basic connections between computational behavior, denotational semantics, and the equational logic of functional programs are thoroughly and rigorously developed. Topics covered include models of types, operational semantics, category theory, domain theory, fixed point (denotational). semantics, full abstraction and other semantic correspondence criteria, types and evaluation, type checking and inference, parametric polymorphism, and subtyping. All topics are treated clearly and in depth, with complete proofs for the major results and numerous exercises.

The Semantics of Programming Languages

The Semantics of Programming Languages
Author: Matthew Hennessy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 182
Release: 1990
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

Arithmetic expressions; A simple functional language; More languages; Computation semantics; Parallelism; Bibliography; Index.

Semantics with Applications: An Appetizer

Semantics with Applications: An Appetizer
Author: Hanne Riis Nielson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2007-04-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1846286921

Semantics will play an important role in the future development of software systems and domain-specific languages. This book provides a needed introductory presentation of the fundamental ideas behind these approaches, stresses their relationship by formulating and proving the relevant theorems, and illustrates the applications of semantics in computer science. Historically important application areas are presented together with some exciting potential applications. The text investigates the relationship between various methods and describes some of the main ideas used, illustrating these by means of interesting applications. The book provides a rigorous introduction to the main approaches to formal semantics of programming languages.

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages
Author: Benjamin C. Pierce
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2002-01-04
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262162098

A comprehensive introduction to type systems and programming languages. A type system is a syntactic method for automatically checking the absence of certain erroneous behaviors by classifying program phrases according to the kinds of values they compute. The study of type systems—and of programming languages from a type-theoretic perspective—has important applications in software engineering, language design, high-performance compilers, and security. This text provides a comprehensive introduction both to type systems in computer science and to the basic theory of programming languages. The approach is pragmatic and operational; each new concept is motivated by programming examples and the more theoretical sections are driven by the needs of implementations. Each chapter is accompanied by numerous exercises and solutions, as well as a running implementation, available via the Web. Dependencies between chapters are explicitly identified, allowing readers to choose a variety of paths through the material. The core topics include the untyped lambda-calculus, simple type systems, type reconstruction, universal and existential polymorphism, subtyping, bounded quantification, recursive types, kinds, and type operators. Extended case studies develop a variety of approaches to modeling the features of object-oriented languages.

Design Concepts in Programming Languages

Design Concepts in Programming Languages
Author: Franklyn Turbak
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 1347
Release: 2008-07-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262303159

Key ideas in programming language design and implementation explained using a simple and concise framework; a comprehensive introduction suitable for use as a textbook or a reference for researchers. Hundreds of programming languages are in use today—scripting languages for Internet commerce, user interface programming tools, spreadsheet macros, page format specification languages, and many others. Designing a programming language is a metaprogramming activity that bears certain similarities to programming in a regular language, with clarity and simplicity even more important than in ordinary programming. This comprehensive text uses a simple and concise framework to teach key ideas in programming language design and implementation. The book's unique approach is based on a family of syntactically simple pedagogical languages that allow students to explore programming language concepts systematically. It takes as premise and starting point the idea that when language behaviors become incredibly complex, the description of the behaviors must be incredibly simple. The book presents a set of tools (a mathematical metalanguage, abstract syntax, operational and denotational semantics) and uses it to explore a comprehensive set of programming language design dimensions, including dynamic semantics (naming, state, control, data), static semantics (types, type reconstruction, polymporphism, effects), and pragmatics (compilation, garbage collection). The many examples and exercises offer students opportunities to apply the foundational ideas explained in the text. Specialized topics and code that implements many of the algorithms and compilation methods in the book can be found on the book's Web site, along with such additional material as a section on concurrency and proofs of the theorems in the text. The book is suitable as a text for an introductory graduate or advanced undergraduate programming languages course; it can also serve as a reference for researchers and practitioners.

Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages

Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages
Author: Gilles Dowek
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2010-12-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0857290762

The design and implementation of programming languages, from Fortran and Cobol to Caml and Java, has been one of the key developments in the management of ever more complex computerized systems. Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages gives the reader the means to discover the tools to think, design, and implement these languages. It proposes a unified vision of the different formalisms that permit definition of a programming language: small steps operational semantics, big steps operational semantics, and denotational semantics, emphasising that all seek to define a relation between three objects: a program, an input value, and an output value. These formalisms are illustrated by presenting the semantics of some typical features of programming languages: functions, recursivity, assignments, records, objects, ... showing that the study of programming languages does not consist of studying languages one after another, but is organized around the features that are present in these various languages. The study of these features leads to the development of evaluators, interpreters and compilers, and also type inference algorithms, for small languages.

Concrete Semantics

Concrete Semantics
Author: Tobias Nipkow
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319105426

Part I of this book is a practical introduction to working with the Isabelle proof assistant. It teaches you how to write functional programs and inductive definitions and how to prove properties about them in Isabelle’s structured proof language. Part II is an introduction to the semantics of imperative languages with an emphasis on applications like compilers and program analysers. The distinguishing feature is that all the mathematics has been formalised in Isabelle and much of it is executable. Part I focusses on the details of proofs in Isabelle; Part II can be read even without familiarity with Isabelle’s proof language, all proofs are described in detail but informally. The book teaches the reader the art of precise logical reasoning and the practical use of a proof assistant as a surgical tool for formal proofs about computer science artefacts. In this sense it represents a formal approach to computer science, not just semantics. The Isabelle formalisation, including the proofs and accompanying slides, are freely available online, and the book is suitable for graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, and researchers in theoretical computer science and logic.

Understanding Programming Languages

Understanding Programming Languages
Author: Cliff B. Jones
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 303059257X

This book is about describing the meaning of programming languages. The author teaches the skill of writing semantic descriptions as an efficient way to understand the features of a language. While a compiler or an interpreter offers a form of formal description of a language, it is not something that can be used as a basis for reasoning about that language nor can it serve as a definition of a programming language itself since this must allow a range of implementations. By writing a formal semantics of a language a designer can yield a far shorter description and tease out, analyse and record design choices. Early in the book the author introduces a simple notation, a meta-language, used to record descriptions of the semantics of languages. In a practical approach, he considers dozens of issues that arise in current programming languages and the key techniques that must be mastered in order to write the required formal semantic descriptions. The book concludes with a discussion of the eight key challenges: delimiting a language (concrete representation), delimiting the abstract content of a language, recording semantics (deterministic languages), operational semantics (non-determinism), context dependency, modelling sharing, modelling concurrency, and modelling exits. The content is class-tested and suitable for final-year undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It is also suitable for any designer who wants to understand languages at a deep level. Most chapters offer projects, some of these quite advanced exercises that ask for complete descriptions of languages, and the book is supported throughout with pointers to further reading and resources. As a prerequisite the reader should know at least one imperative high-level language and have some knowledge of discrete mathematics notation for logic and set theory.