🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DMASON.92Nov5131527@plg.uwaterloo.ca> dmason@uwaterloo.ca (Dave Mason) writes:
   In article <720801988.16035@minster.york.ac.uk> song@minster.york.ac.uk writes:
   > I am aware that there are four different styles to define semantics.
   > 	operational
   > 	denotational
   > 	algebraic 
   > 	axiomatic

   There is also action semantics, as describes by Mosses.  In many ways,
   action semantics is better than the others, but it's also newer.

I don't want to start a "my spec. system better than your spec.
system" but would you (or anybody else) care to expand on the above?

My only exposure to action semantics is via a couple of tech reports
and David Watt's book [1].  From this I get the impression that great
emphasis is put on the readability aspect of the definition.  However,
I'm at a loss to see the difference between the action semantic
definitions given and an equivalent denotational/operational
definition that uses equally well chosen English words instead of
Greek symbols[2].  There must be more to it than just notation, so
could somebody please enlighten me?

bevan

[1] 
@book
{ Watt91
, author=    {David A. Watt}
, title=     {Programming Language Syntax and Semantics}
, publisher= {Prentice Hall International}
, year=      {1991}
}

[2] Use monads if you want to hide "state" and/or "enviroments" in a
    similar fashion to the facets in an action semantic definition :-

@inproceedings
{ Moggi89
, author=    {E. Moggi}
, title=     {Computational lambda-calculus and monads}
, booktitle= {IEEE International Symposium on Logic In Computer Science}
, year=      {1989}
}

@techreport
{ Wadler92
, author=      {Philip Wadler}
, title=       {Comprehending Monads}
, institution= {Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow}
, address=     {Glasgow, UK, G12 8QQ}
, year=        {1992}
}