The Munich project CIP. Volume I: The wide spectrum language CIP-L (Q1062444)

Program construction can be seen as an evolutionary process, starting from some formal problem specification and going through a series of more and more detailed versions until a sufficiently efficient effective program is obtained. Accordingly this process comprises the steps of requirement engineering, specification of the problem, transition to algorithmic formulation, transformation in machine-oriented versions, final optimization. Application of formal rules and techniques based on transformations to this development process and its machine-assistance are investigated in the Munich project CIP. The book under review gives the description and formal definition of a language, which was designated to support such an approach. The book is divided into four parts. Part 0 contains a general introduction to transformational programming and to the project CIP in particular. In Part I, the various constructs of the language are introduced together with examples of their place in program development. Parts II and III then give a description of the language in a systematic way. Due to many new ideas and aspects, clarity and understandability of the exposition, this book would be very useful not only for CIP-interested readers, but also for anyone who has to deal with programming and specification languages in general.