Action Semantics in Retrospect

This paper is a themed account of the action semantics project, which Peter Mosses has led since the 1980s. It explains his motivations for developing action semantics, the inspirations behind its design, and the foundations of action semantics based on unified algebras. It goes on to outline some applications of action semantics to describe real programming languages, and some efforts to implement programming languages using action semantics directed compiler generation. It concludes by outlining more recent developments and reflecting on the success of the action semantics project.

[1]  Erich J. Neuhold,et al.  Formal description of programming concepts , 1991 .

[2]  David A. Schmidt,et al.  Type Inference for Action Semantics , 1990, ESOP.

[3]  Peter D. Mosses.  A Modular SOS for Action Notation , 1999 .

[4]  Peter David Mosses.  Mathematical semantics and compiler generation , 1975 .

[5]  Martin A. Musicante,et al.  An Action Semantics for ML Concurrency Primitives , 1994 .

[6]  Peter D. Mosses.  A Constructive Approach to Compiler Correctness , 1980, ICALP.

[7]  John W. Backus,et al.  Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?: a functional style and its algebra of programs , 1978, CACM.

[8]  Peter D. Mosses.  Action Semantics , 1986, ADT.

[9]  Peter D. Mosses.  Unified Algebras and Action Semantics , 1989, STACS.

[10]  Peter D. Mosses,et al.  Abstract Semantic Algebras , 1982, Formal Description of Programming Concepts.

[11]  Jens Palsberg,et al.  A Provably Correct Compiler Generator , 1992, ESOP.

[12]  J. Van Leeuwen,et al.  Handbook of theoretical computer science - Part A: Algorithms and complexity; Part B: Formal models and semantics , 1990 .

[13]  David A. Schmidt,et al.  Extraction of Strong Typing Laws from Action Semantics Definitions , 1992, ESOP.

[14]  Deryck Forsyth Brown,et al.  Actress: An Action Semantics Directed Compiler Generator , 1992, CC.

[15]  Peter Ørbæk.  OASIS: An Optimizing Action-Based Compiler Generator , 1994, CC.

[16]  Peter D. Mosses,et al.  Denotational semantics , 1995, LICS 1995.

[17]  Gordon D. Plotkin,et al.  A structural approach to operational semantics , 2004, J. Log. Algebraic Methods Program..

[18]  Peter D. Mosses.  Foundations of Modular SOS , 1999, MFCS.

[19]  Gordon Plotkin,et al.  Semantics of Data Types , 1984, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[20]  Gilles Kahn,et al.  Natural Semantics , 1987, STACS.

[21]  Peter D. Mosses,et al.  A Basic Abstract Semantic Algebra , 1984, Semantics of Data Types.

[22]  Robin Milner,et al.  On Observing Nondeterminism and Concurrency , 1980, ICALP.

[23]  Peter D. Mosses,et al.  Composing programming languages by combining action-semantics modules , 2001, Sci. Comput. Program..

[24]  David A. Watt,et al.  Programming language design concepts , 2004 .

[25]  Leszek Pacholski,et al.  Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 1999 , 1999, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.