Abstract

We give a formal specification of the semantics of atomic actions. We show that adding atomic action constructs to a low-level imperative language allows one to program higher-level synchronization mechanisms. 1. Introduction. This note intends to provide an alternative view on the so-called "action refinement" concept, which is by now widely studied (cf. for instance [4], and the references therein). Action refinement is formalized as the replacement of an action by a possibly complex process. Many recent papers on this topic advocate the idea that a sensible notion of process should be robust with respect to action refinement. For lack of an abstract mathematical notion, a process is understood as an equivalence class, and the problem is to find equivalences which are congruences with respect to the operation of substituting processes for actions. It is not my intention to question the theoretical work that has been done in this direction. However, one may wonder whether this substi...

Citations

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