Topology, domain theory and theoretical computer science (Q1295216)

This article is an extended survey of the ways in which general topology, and more specifically the interconnections between topology and ordered sets, have played a fundamental role in the development of theoretical computer science. The author makes it clear that his attention in writing it was to `attract the attention of topologists to this area'; although the reviewer is not (by this definition) a topologist -- being already well aware of the developments in domain theory which form the central theme of this article -- he believes that the author has done an excellent job of expounding the material to those who have not met it before. In particular, the article provides a useful counterbalance to a recent one in the same journal by \textit{J. W. de Bakker} and \textit{E. P. de Vink} [Denotational models for programming languages: Application of Banach's fixed point theorem, ibid. 85, No. 1-3, 35-52 (1998)], which described the applications of complete metric spaces in denotational semantics, but underplayed the order-theoretical aspects of the subject.