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Locally Abstract, Globally Concrete Semantics of Concurrent Programming Languages

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Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10501))

Abstract

Language semantics that is formal and mathematically precise, is the essential prerequisite for the design of logics and calculi that permit automated reasoning about programs. The most popular approach to programming language semantics—small step operational semantics (SOS)—is not modular in the sense that it does not separate conceptual layers in the target language. SOS is also hard to relate formally to program logics and calculi. Minimalist semantic formalisms, such as automata, Petri nets, or \(\pi \)-calculus are inadequate for rich programming languages. We propose a new formal trace semantics for a concurrent, active objects language. It is designed with the explicit aim of being compatible with a sequent calculus for a program logic and has a strong model theoretic flavor. Our semantics separates sequential and object-local from concurrent computation: the former yields abstract traces which in a second stage are combined into global system behavior.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The official citation is [4], but the approach goes back to the early 1980s.

  2. 2.

    This future is never retrieved by any completion reaction event and can be thought of as the client who started P’s execution.

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Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Dave Sands for useful hints and feedback and to Georges P. for inspiring our use of constraints.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Reiner Hähnle

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

    Crystal Chang Din, Einar Broch Johnsen, Ka I Pun & Silvia Lizeth Tapia Tarifa

Authors
  1. Crystal Chang Din
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  2. Reiner Hähnle
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  3. Einar Broch Johnsen
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  4. Ka I Pun
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  5. Silvia Lizeth Tapia Tarifa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reiner Hähnle .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Renate A. Schmidt

  2. University of Brasília, Brasília D.F., Brazil

    Cláudia Nalon

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Din, C.C., Hähnle, R., Johnsen, E.B., Pun, K.I., Tapia Tarifa, S.L. (2017). Locally Abstract, Globally Concrete Semantics of Concurrent Programming Languages. In: Schmidt, R., Nalon, C. (eds) Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods. TABLEAUX 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10501. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66902-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66902-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66901-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-66902-1

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