Thesis-1998-Caswell.pdf (4.2 MB)
The action semantics of object-oriented languages
thesis
posted on 2018-01-26, 12:23 authored by Matthew J.A. CaswellAction Semantics is a framework for defining the semantics of languages. It is
intended to be accessible to a wider audience of Computer Scientists than traditional
semantics frameworks (such as Denotational Semantics). There has been little work
carried out to date on the techniques required to define object-oriented languages with
Action Semantics.
The work presented in this thesis examines four potential approaches to defining the
Action Semantics of object-oriented languages. In order to illustrate the four
approaches a simple language EIL (Example Inheritance Language) is given, and
described using these four approaches. The language Smalltalk-80 has been selected
for a case study of a practical application of one of the techniques described above.
It is important to be able to relate Action Semantics definitions of object-oriented
languages to similar definitions given in other frameworks. It is described how this
can be achieved. An example is given for the Action Semantics and Denotational
Semantics of Smalltalk.
This thesis concludes that it is feasible to produce Action Semantics definitions of
object-oriented languages.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Computer Science
Publisher
© Matthew J.A. CaswellPublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 2.5 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/Publication date
1998Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy at Loughborough University.Language
- en