Formal Semantics of ALGOL 60: Four Descriptions in their Historical Context

Astarte, TK; Jones, CB

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-97226-8_4

Formal Semantics of ALGOL 60: Four Descriptions in their Historical Context

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Troy Astarte ORCiD, Professor Cliff Jones ORCiD

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Abstract

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018. The programming language ALGOL 60 has been used to illustrate several different styles of formal semantic description. This paper identifies the main challenges in providing formal semantics for imperative programming languages and reviews the responses to these challenges in four relatively complete formal descriptions of ALGOL 60. The aim is to identify the key concepts rather than become distracted by the minutiae of notational conventions adopted by their authors. This paper also explores the historical reasons for the development of these descriptions in particular, and gives some general historical background of the groups involved (the IBM laboratories in Vienna and Hursley, and Oxford’s Programming Research Group).