Article View: comp.std.c
Article #881Re: Denotational Semantics and Language Standards
From: Henry Spencer
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 1989 20:11
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 1989 20:11
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In article <1989Nov8.225008.793@algor2.algorists.com> jeffrey@algor2.ALGORISTS.COM (Jeffrey Kegler) writes: >... A brave new world, where >any question about dpANS could be stated as a theorem and proved or >disproved (or, much less likely, found undecidable), would seem a vast >improvement. Maybe. Remember that "proved" and "disproved" should really read "claimed to be [dis]proved" -- only God can consistently write error-free proofs. Certainly human mathematicians and program-verification people don't, as witness quite a few embarrassing errors in formally-refereed published papers purporting to be demonstrations of how to verify programs! A formal definition of C would inevitably be large and messy, especially given the many places where C refuses to promise how the machine behaves. I suspect that proving theorems from it would not be a simple exercise. -- A bit of tolerance is worth a | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology megabyte of flaming. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
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Newsgroups: comp.std.c Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Denotational Semantics and Language Standards Message-ID: <1989Nov9.201125.8989@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <11065@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> <2727@cbnewsl.ATT.COM> <11477@smoke.BRL.MIL> <11081@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> <11555@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1989Nov8.222632.699@algor2.algorists.com> <1989Nov8.225008.793@algor2.algorists.com> Date: Thu, 9 Nov 89 20:11:25 GMT