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Approaches to program semantics

This project offers a comprehensive survey on the 10 most common-used approaches to give programs formal semantics.

Languages

  • Ocaml
  • Haskell
  • Maude
  • Racket
  • Python
  • Prolog
  • Java
  • C/C++

Semantic approaches

  • Big-step SOS
  • Small-step SOS
  • Denotaional semantics
  • MSOS
  • Reduction semantics with evaluation contexts
  • CK
  • CEK
  • SECD
  • SCC
  • CHAM

Experiment plan

An imperative language

  1. Start with IMP without while. Ask vonlunteers to add the semantics of while. When everybody is done, freeze a canonical version of the semantics and call the language IMP for all.
  2. Add incremental statement ++x to IMP.
  3. Add I/O with read() and print(e) to IMP (at 1, not 2).
  4. Add abrupt termination with division-by-zero error and halt; to IMP.
  5. Add threads with spawn(code) and join; to IMP.
  6. Add local variable declarations to IMP.
  7. Combine 2-6 all together, and call the language IMP++.

A functional language

  1. Start with LAMBDA with basic constructs, including \lambda and \mu binders, application, substitution, and builtins.
  2. Add concurrency with spawn and join to LAMBDA.
  3. Add call/cc to LAMBDA.
  4. Combine 2-3 all together, and call the language LAMBDA++.

Remarks

  • Tests are very important. We will provide a comprehensive set of programs that test every corner cases of the semantics.
  • Syntax of the languages are very important. We will provide it for every language construct.
  • Nondeterminism behavior is very important. The ability to search for all possible execution results is required. For some semantic approaches such as big-step SOS and denotational semantics, full nondeterminism is almost impossible in practice, but at least the choice nondeterminism should be handled properly.
  • We require two artifacts:
    1. Semantics implementation should pass all provided tests.
    2. An essay that describes and scores every semantic approach with explanation and justification.

For those who take CS 522 Fall 2018

To fulfill the requirement, you should

  • pick an implementation language
  • pick a semantic style from either big-step or small-step SOS
  • implement the semantics of IMP++ directly, that is, you don't need to do it incrementally.

The following is a list of students who participate in the project. If you are taking the project but your name is not in the following list, please add it yourself.

  • Armrin: big-step in Racket.
  • Binzhe: TBD in Python.
  • Nick: small-step in Haskell.
  • Siwakorn: small-step in Racket.
  • Xiaohong: big-step in OCaml.
  • Dan: big-step in Haskell.

Please put your code in a folder structure like <IL>/<CL>/<part#-part descriptor>/<semantic#-CL-semantic name>/ where IL is the implementation language (e.g. haskell) and CL is the created language (i.e. imp or lambda). This is the same format as the Maude homeworks from class. For example, the code for implementing IMP++ in Haskell using big-step semantics would be found under haskell/imp/6-imp++/1-imp-bigstep/.