Introduction to the theory of programming languages.

DOI10.1007/978-0-85729-076-2MaRDI QIDQ1960263zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Gilles Dowek, Jean-Jacques Lévy

Publication date 13 October 2010

Published in Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-076-2

zbMATH Keywords

fixed point theoremfunctional programmingPCF languagesemantics of programming languages

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to computer science (68-01) Theory of programming languages (68N15) Functional programming and lambda calculus (68N18) Theory of compilers and interpreters (68N20) Mathematical aspects of software engineering (specification, verification, metrics, requirements, etc.) (68N30)

Review text

The book is devoted to the methods of defining semantics of programming languages, understood as the relation between the program and its input and output. The first chapter defines basic concepts, in particular the fixed point theorem, as well as three formalisms -- denotational semantics, big-step operational semantics and small-step operational semantics. In the following, the introduced concepts and methods are applied to the functional programming language Programming Computable Functions (PCF), originally formulated by Dana Scott. Chapter 2 describes the syntax of the language and the principles of its operational semantics. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the creation of an interpreter and/or a compiler for PCF based on the definition of its semantics. Chapters 5 and 6 elaborate the exposition by adding types to PCF and formulating its denotational semantics and type inference. The next two chapters further extend the language with references, assignment statements, records and objects. All the chapters are supplemented by exercises. Chapter 9 contains a suitable summary of the exposition. This is a very good textbook from the Springer series Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science; it was first published in French in 2005 [Introduction à la théorie des langages de programmation. Palaiseau: Les Éditions de l'École Polytechnique (2006; Zbl 1193.68067)].

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