A rigorous, self-contained introduction to structural operational semantics and how to use it to describe, reason about and assist the implementation of features found in common programming languages. The author assumes no experience with any specific programming language, making the book easily accessible to students and computing professionals.
A rigorous, self-contained introduction to the theory of operational semantics of programming languages and its use.
Structural operational semantics is a simple, yet powerful mathematical theory for describing the behaviour of programs in an implementation-independent manner. This book provides a self-contained introduction to structural operational semantics, featuring semantic definitions using big-step and small-step semantics of many standard programming language constructs, including control structures, structured declarations and objects, parameter mechanisms and procedural abstraction, concurrency, nondeterminism and the features of functional programming languages. Along the way, the text introduces and applies the relevant proof techniques, including forms of induction and notions of semantic equivalence (including bisimilarity). Thoroughly class-tested, this book has evolved from lecture notes used by the author over a 10-year period at Aalborg University to teach undergraduate and graduate students. The result is a thorough introduction that makes the subject clear to students and computing professionals without sacrificing its rigour. No experience with any specific programming language is required.
List of illustrations; List of tables; Preface; About the illustrations; Part I. Background: 1. A question of semantics; 2. Mathematical preliminaries; Part II. First Examples: 3. The basic principles; 4. Basic imperative statements; Part III. Language Constructs: 5. Control structures; 6. Blocks and procedures (1); 7. Parameters; 8. Concurrent communicating processes; 9. Structured declarations; 10. Blocks and procedures (2); 11. Concurrent object-oriented languages; 12. Functional programming languages; Part IV. Related Topics: 13. Typed programming languages; 14. An introduction to denotational semantics; 15. Recursive definitions; Appendix A. A big-step semantics of Bip; Appendix B. Implementing semantic definitions in SML; References; Index.
Hüttel, HansnHans Hüttel is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University, Denmark.
Über den Autor
Hans Hüttel is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University, Denmark.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of illustrations; List of tables; Preface; About the illustrations; Part I. Background: 1. A question of semantics; 2. Mathematical preliminaries; Part II. First Examples: 3. The basic principles; 4. Basic imperative statements; Part III. Language Constructs: 5. Control structures; 6. Blocks and procedures (1); 7. Parameters; 8. Concurrent communicating processes; 9. Structured declarations; 10. Blocks and procedures (2); 11. Concurrent object-oriented languages; 12. Functional programming languages; Part IV. Related Topics: 13. Typed programming languages; 14. An introduction to denotational semantics; 15. Recursive definitions; Appendix A. A big-step semantics of Bip; Appendix B. Implementing semantic definitions in SML; References; Index.
Klappentext
A rigorous, self-contained introduction to the theory of operational semantics of programming languages and its use.
