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Language design methods based on semantic principles

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Summary

Two language design methods based on principles derived from the denotational approach to programming language semantics are described and illustrated by an application to the language Pascal. The principles are, firstly, the correspondence between parametric and declarative mechanisms, and secondly, a principle of abstraction for programming languages adapted from set theory. Several useful extensions and generalizations of Pascal emerge by applying these principles, including a solution to the array parameter problem, and a modularization facility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing and Information Science, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    R. D. Tennent

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Tennent, R.D. Language design methods based on semantic principles. Acta Informatica 8, 97–112 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289243

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