Description
Book SynopsisSemantics will play an important role in the future development of software systems and domain-specific languages. This book provides a needed introductory presentation of the fundamental ideas behind these approaches, stresses their relationship by formulating and proving the relevant theorems, and illustrates the applications of semantics in computer science. Historically important application areas are presented together with some exciting potential applications. The text investigates the relationship between various methods and describes some of the main ideas used, illustrating these by means of interesting applications. The book provides a rigorous introduction to the main approaches to formal semantics of programming languages.
Trade ReviewFrom the reviews:
"This book title, with its explicit reference to applications, quickly grabbed my attention due to the theoretical nature of formal semantics. … In any case, this book certainly fits the bill for an undergraduate course on the topic. … It also includes plenty of solved examples and exercises for students to help them grasp the key ideas and techniques behind the different mathematical models that can be used to describe the computations performed by a computer program." (Fernando Berzal, Computing Reviews, January, 2008)
"This book presents a rigorous introduction to the main three approaches: operational semantics, denotational semantics, and axiomatic semantics. This book investigates the relationship between the various methods, and describes some of the main ideas by using applications. … Several exercises are provided. … help the student to understand definitions, results, and techniques … ." (G. Ciobanu, ACM Computing Reviews, May, 2009)
Table of ContentsOperational Semantics.- More on Operational Semantics.- Provably Correct Implementation.- Denotational Semantics.- More on Denotational Semantics.- Program Analysis.- More on Program Analysis.- Axiomatic Program Verification.- More on Axiomatic Program Verification.- Further Reading.
