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Examples of formal semantics

Part of the Lecture Notes in Mathematics book series (LNM,volume 188)

Abstract

A technique of formal definition, based on relations between "attributes" associated with nonterminal symbols in a context-free grammar, is illustrated by several applications to simple, yet typical, problems. First we define the basic properties of lambda expressions, involving substitution and renaming of bound variables. Then a simple programming language is defined using several different points of view. The emphasis is on "declarative" rather than "imperative" or "algorithmic" forms of definition.

Keywords

  • Formal Definition
  • Turing Machine
  • Global Variable
  • Parse Tree
  • Semantic Rule

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The research reported here was supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (SD 183), and in part by IBM Corporation.

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© 1971 Springer-Verlag

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Knuth, D.E. (1971). Examples of formal semantics. In: Engeler, E. (eds) Symposium on Semantics of Algorithmic Languages. Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol 188. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0059699

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0059699

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-05377-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36499-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive