Semantic descriptions library

Screen Shot 2014-08-19 at 09.55.00One of the PLanCompS goals (as a separate work package), involves obtaining, digitising, analysing and indexing existing language specifications, for inclusion in a digital library

The main contributor of this work is Prof Cliff Jones.  He worked with the IBM Vienna group on the operational semantics (VDL) description of programming languages in the late 1960s; on a second spell in Vienna he played a major part in the development of their denotational description method (VDM). He is co-editor or single author of all of the early books on VDM.

The current (evolving) contributions to the “library of semantics” being developed in the PLanCompS project include those aspects of “VDM” relating to language description that were firmed up in the IBM Laboratory in Vienna around a project to build a complier from the PL/I language to the “FS” machine (that got cancelled).

Other descriptions (follow the citation links to get to the pdf) using VDM include: