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About this book
In the 1930s, mathematical logicians studied the notion of "effective comput ability" using such notions as recursive functions, A-calculus, and Turing machines. The 1940s saw the construction of the first electronic computers, and the next 20 years saw the evolution of higher-level programming languages in which programs could be written in a convenient fashion independent (thanks to compilers and interpreters) of the architecture of any specific machine. The development of such languages led in turn to the general analysis of questions of syntax, structuring strings of symbols which could count as legal programs, and semantics, determining the "meaning" of a program, for example, as the function it computes in transforming input data to output results. An important approach to semantics, pioneered by Floyd, Hoare, and Wirth, is called assertion semantics: given a specification of which assertions (preconditions) on input data should guarantee that the results satisfy desired assertions (postconditions) on output data, one seeks a logical proof that the program satisfies its specification. An alternative approach, pioneered by Scott and Strachey, is called denotational semantics: it offers algebraic techniques for characterizing the denotation of (i. e. , the function computed by) a program-the properties of the program can then be checked by direct comparison of the denotation with the specification. This book is an introduction to denotational semantics. More specifically, we introduce the reader to two approaches to denotational semantics: the order semantics of Scott and Strachey and our own partially additive semantics.
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Denotational Semantics of Control
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Front Matter
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Semantics of Recursion
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Algebraic Approaches to Program Semantics
Authors: Ernest G. Manes, Michael A. Arbib
Series Title: Monographs in Computer Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4962-7
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
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eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 1986
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4612-9377-4Published: 17 January 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4612-4962-7Published: 06 December 2012
Series ISSN: 0172-603X
Series E-ISSN: 2512-5486
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 353
Topics: Logics and Meanings of Programs, Mathematical Logic and Formal Languages, Programming Techniques, Artificial Intelligence