Talk:Formal semantics of programming languages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The common sense says there are three major approaches for semantics. One example is this book (which also cites Attribute grammar as an approach). Most of the major references in semantics agree on that.

Also, I have sorted the approaches by some criterion: first three major by year/widespread, and the other ones alphabetically. It makes more sense to keep this way, unless someone who know them all and has a NOPV could sort them all by year/widespread.

- Leonardo Lang 08:13, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Notes on my recent major edit: Summary of what I think I did:

• More intuition for what denotational/operational/axiomatic mean
• Considerable trimming of the descriptions of action semantics, etc. I don't think the "is it denotational, operational, or axiomatic?" game is all that illuminating for someone who's not already an expert.
• Examples of why you'd want to relate multiple semantics, to give some context to the mention of abstract interpretation.
• Misc. edits for prose style

k.lee 04:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)