A rewriting logic approach to operational semantics

  • Authors:

  • Traian Florin Şerbănuţă;Grigore Roşu;José Meseguer

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA and Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Bucharest, Romania;Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA;Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

  • Venue:
  • Information and Computation
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

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, continuation-based semantics, and the chemical abstract machine. 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.