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A scripting language for practical agent-oriented programming

Published: 05 November 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the features of a scripting language proposed to support the practical implementation of agents and multi-agent systems using an agent-oriented programming approach. Agents are programmed in terms of procedures to be executed when interesting events occur, and the language provides specific constructs to describe managed events and related procedures. Among possible events, those related to communication are supported by specific constructs because of their relevance for the implementation of multi-agent systems. The proposed language is characterised by a strongly expressive syntax largely inspired by modern scripting languages to promote readability and to make agent programs similar to pseudocodes. Such a feature ensures that the programmer can use the language to describe the reactions of agents to events at a high level of abstraction, with all the advantages that it brings in terms of software quality.

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cover image ACM Conferences
AGERE 2018: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Based on Actors, Agents, and Decentralized Control
November 2018
71 pages
ISBN:9781450360661
DOI:10.1145/3281366
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 05 November 2018

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Author Tags

  1. agent-oriented programming
  2. distributed programming languages
  3. scripting languages
  4. software agents

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  • (2023)Imperative and Event-Driven Programming of Interoperable Software AgentsEngineering Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_2(23-40)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Fantastic MASs and Where to Find Them: First Results and Lesson LearnedEngineering Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/978-3-031-48539-8_16(233-252)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
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