Abstract not found

Compilers for higher-order programming languages like Scheme, ML, and Lisp can be broadly characterized as either "direct compilers" or "continuation-passing style (CPS) compilers", depending on their main intermediate representation. Our central result is a precise correspondence between the two compilation strategies. Starting from

This note is a historical survey of Christopher Strachey's influence on the development of semantic models of assignment and storage management in procedural languages.

One of the earliest approaches to giving formal semantics for programming languages was “operational semantics”. Enthusiasm for this approach has waxed and waned (not least in my own mind). The main objective of this paper is to tease apart some concepts involved in writing such operational descriptions and

This paper describes (one person’s view of) how the Vienna Development Method grew out of the earlier work on the Vienna Definition Language. Both of these activities were undertaken at the IBM Laboratory Vienna during the 1960s and 70s. Dedication In gratitude to Peter Lucas who is a generous and challenging colleague who (twice) aided me in moving to a delightful city which changed my life. Please cite the original publication:

Krivine presents the machine, which produces weak head normal form results. Sestoft introduces several call-by-need variants of the machine that implement result sharing via pushing update markers on the stack in a way similar to the TIM and the STG machine. When a sequence of consecutive markers appears on the stack, all but the first cause redundant updates. Improvements related to these sequences have dealt with either the consumption of the markers or the removal of the markers once they appear. Here we present an improvement that eliminates the production of marker sequences of length greater than one. This improvement results in the machine, a more space and time e#cient variant of K. We then apply

This paper offers an assessment of what has been achieved in three decades of work on the semantics of programming languages and pinpoints some practical problems in computing which might stimulate further research. The examples sketched in this paper come from the author's own research on concurrent object oriented languages, from database practice, and from more speculative research on Internet issues.

Abstract. This paper describes an undergraduate course taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne; the title of the module is Understanding Programming Languages. The main thrust of the course is to understand how to model features of language semantics. Specifically, (structural) operational semantics (SOS) is taught as a convenient and notational light way of recording and experimenting with features of procedural programming languages. We outline the content, discuss the contentious issue of tool support and relate experiences. 1

The thesis of this dissertation is that formal definitions of the syntax and semantics of computer languages are needed. This dissertation investigates two candidates for formally defining computer languages: (1) the formalism of canonical systems for defining the syntax of a computer language and its translation into a target language, and (2) the formalisms of the l-calculus and extended Markov algorithms as a combined formalism used as the basis of a target language for defining the semantics of a computer language.

This paper describes an undergraduate course taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne; the title of the module is Understanding Programming Languages. The main thrust of the course is to understand how to model features of language semantics. Specifically, (structural) operational semantics (SOS) is taught as a convenient and notational light way of recording and experimenting with features of procedural programming languages. We outline the content, discuss the contentious issue of tool support and relate experiences.