On 17/03/2009, at 1:13 PM, Jonathan Cast wrote:
[Totally OT tangent: How did operational semantics come to get its
noun?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like a precís of the
implementation, rather than a truly semantic part of a language
specification.]
I haven't followed the whole thread, so perhaps I'm missing some
important context to this question.
It is true that operational semantics are often used to summarise or
explain an _implementation_ of a language feature, but I wouldn't say
that they are always used in this way. An operational semantics may be
used to define a "behaviour" function: (program x input) -> outcome.
The big-step style of operational semantics style tends to be less
like an implementation, and more like a specification. Perhaps the
more crucial part of operational semantics is that it just deals with
syntactic terms as its "values".
Apologies if this has nothing to do with your question.
Cheers,
Bernie._______________________________________________
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