A UTP Semantics of pGCL as a Homogeneous Relation

  • Riccardo Bresciani
  • Andrew Butterfield
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 7321)

Abstract

We present an encoding of the semantics of the probabilistic guarded command language (pGCL) in the Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP) framework. Our contribution is a UTP encoding that captures pGCL programs as predicate-transformers, on predicates over probability distributions on before- and after-states: these predicates capture the same information as the models traditionally used to give semantics to pGCL; in addition our formulation allows us to define a generic choice construct, that covers conditional, probabilistic and non-deterministic choice. As an example we study the Monty Hall game in this framework.

Keywords

Semantic Model Probabilistic Choice Probabilistic Program Homogeneous Relation Galois Connection 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Riccardo Bresciani
    • 1
  • Andrew Butterfield
    • 1
  1. 1.Foundations and Methods GroupTrinity College DublinDublinIreland

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