[r6rs-discuss] Re: operational or denotational semantics?

From: Matthias Felleisen <matthias>
Date: Sun Feb 25 10:21:01 2007

On Feb 25, 2007, at 9:19 AM, r6rs-discuss-request_at_lists.r6rs.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:19:30 -0800
> From: Thomas Lord <lord_at_emf.net>
> Subject: [r6rs-discuss] operational or denotational semantics?
> To: R6RS <r6rs-discuss_at_lists.r6rs.org>
> Message-ID: <45E12A72.8020704_at_emf.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
> R6RS should have both, with a consistency proof, page count
> be damned.
>
> A conservative denotational as "must" and a usable
> operational as "for example".


Since Scheme is still observably sequential, I urge you to use the
category of Observably Sequential Functions instead of plain
Continuous Functions just so that the denotational equivalence gets
closer to truth (observational equivalence, as defined via
denotations). I'd also like to see an attempt made to eliminate the
store and continuation passing style aspects of the semantic mapping
because I suspect that this poses additional problems.

Literature hints available on request.

-- Matthias

member of the Knights for Combatting Rumors on the Usefulness of
Denotational Semantics vs Operational Semantics
Received on Sun Feb 25 2007 - 10:20:53 UTC