A Rewriting Logic Approach to Operational Semantics (Extended Abstract)

  • Authors:
  • Traian Florin Şerbănuţă;Grigore Roşu;José Meseguer

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • Venue:
  • Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS)
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This paper shows how rewriting logic semantics (RLS) can be used as a computational logic framework for operational semantic definitions of programming languages. Several operational semantics styles are addressed: big-step and small-step structural operational semantics (SOS), modular SOS, reduction semantics with evaluation contexts, and continuation-based semantics. Each of these language definitional styles can be faithfully captured as an RLS theory, in the sense that there is a one-to-one correspondence between computational steps in the original language definition and computational steps in the corresponding RLS theory. A major goal of this paper is to show that RLS does not force or pre-impose any given language definitional style, and that its flexibility and ease of use makes RLS an appealing framework for exploring new definitional styles.