Principled and Pragmatic Specification of Programming Languages. / Johnstone, Adrian; Scott, Elizabeth.
In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 11758, 23.09.2019, p. 165-180.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Principled and Pragmatic Specification of Programming Languages. / Johnstone, Adrian; Scott, Elizabeth.
In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 11758, 23.09.2019, p. 165-180.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Principled and Pragmatic Specification of Programming Languages
AU - Johnstone, Adrian
AU - Scott, Elizabeth
PY - 2019/9/23
Y1 - 2019/9/23
N2 - Programmers from the imperative tradition often have little experience of using inductive definitions and inference, and that may explain why executable SOS specifications have not become a standard feature of mainstream language development toolkits. We wish to `de-mystify' SOS for such programmers, allowing precise and principled specifications to be given for even small industrial DSL's. eSOS (elided Structural Operational Semantics) is a compact tool for specifying executable formal semantics. It is designed to be a translation target for enriched SOS specification languages. The simplicity of eSOS and its reference Java implementation allow programmers to follow the details of an execution trace, and to step through rules using a conventional debugging framework, allowing them to understand and use SOS-based specifications to construct usable language interpreters.
AB - Programmers from the imperative tradition often have little experience of using inductive definitions and inference, and that may explain why executable SOS specifications have not become a standard feature of mainstream language development toolkits. We wish to `de-mystify' SOS for such programmers, allowing precise and principled specifications to be given for even small industrial DSL's. eSOS (elided Structural Operational Semantics) is a compact tool for specifying executable formal semantics. It is designed to be a translation target for enriched SOS specification languages. The simplicity of eSOS and its reference Java implementation allow programmers to follow the details of an execution trace, and to step through rules using a conventional debugging framework, allowing them to understand and use SOS-based specifications to construct usable language interpreters.
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-32441-4_11
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-32441-4_11
M3 - Article
VL - 11758
SP - 165
EP - 180
JO - Lecture Notes in Computer Science
JF - Lecture Notes in Computer Science
SN - 0302-9743
ER -