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Object-Oriented Operational Semantics

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System Analysis and Modeling. Technology-Specific Aspects of Models (SAM 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9959))

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Abstract

Operational semantics is one way of providing meaning to an executable language. On a high level of abstraction, operational semantics means to define an interpreter or an abstract machine for the language. In this article, we review the concept of operational semantics in the scope of meta-model-based language definitions and identify challenges and issues. We provide a clean conceptual approach using an object-oriented runtime environment and state change operations, which relies on an underlying abstract virtual machine. We present the approach using a sample language.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Please note the difference between structure of the language (its constructs, e.g. if-construct), and structure of the runtime (its runtime elements, e.g. a stack frame).

  2. 2.

    SOS as a language (on M3) is functional, not the language described using SOS (on M2). Of course, SOS can be used to describe all kinds of languages.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful questions and remarks.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of ICT, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

    Andreas Prinz

  2. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Birger Møller-Pedersen

  3. Department of Computer Science, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Joachim Fischer

Authors
  1. Andreas Prinz
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  2. Birger Møller-Pedersen
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  3. Joachim Fischer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Prinz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , Göttingen, Germany

    Jens Grabowski

  2. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , Göttingen, Germany

    Steffen Herbold

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Prinz, A., Møller-Pedersen, B., Fischer, J. (2016). Object-Oriented Operational Semantics. In: Grabowski , J., Herbold, S. (eds) System Analysis and Modeling. Technology-Specific Aspects of Models . SAM 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9959. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46613-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46613-2_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46612-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46613-2

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