A Hierarchical Approach to Formal Semantics With Application to the Definition of PL/ CS
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
On the theory of programming logics
STOC '77 Proceedings of the ninth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
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The PL/CS language is an instructional variant of PL/C designed to provide a simple, easy-to-understand tool to teach a disciplined style of programming (see [Conway 1976]). This report gives a complete formal semantic specification of the language, following the style of [Scott and Strachey 1972]. In keeping with the goal of simplicity in the design of PL/CS, the formal definition is presented in an hierarchical fashion and uses only elementary mathematical concepts, such as set, relation, and recursive definition. Key Words: programming language semantics, denotational semantics, recursive functions, Pl/I, PL/C, PL/CS.