Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!laura!julien!angelica
From: angelica@julien.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Angelica M. Kappel)
Newsgroups: comp.specification
Subject: Re: specifying OBJ in itself
Message-ID: <1990Oct11.115952@julien.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
Date: 11 Oct 90 10:59:52 GMT
References: <6470@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Sender: news@laura.UUCP
Reply-To: angelica@julien.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Angelica M. Kappel)
Organization: University of Dortmund, FRG
Lines: 31

In article <6470@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack
Campin) writes:
|> Has anybody tried to specify an algebraic specification language,
like
|> OBJ3, in itself?

We had a project group called BASTA in 1988/89 where we did 
exactly what you are looking for.
We specified mainly narrowing and rewriting in OBJ3 (including
order-sorted 
rewriting but without module system). An algebraic specification can be
given in form
of rewrite rules. Unfortunately, it turned out that the implementation
of OBJ3 
is slow and used too much space on our machine (SUN 3/50). Our
specification grew too big
to be executable.

There exists a report of the group BASTA at the University of Dortmund
(in German):
"Endbericht der PG BASTA - Basissystem f"ur Termersetzung und
automatisches Beweisen,
SS 1988 - WS 1988/89" . The sources are completely listed there.
Anyone who is interested may contact the following address:

               BASTA
               Lehrstuhl Informatik 5
               Universit"at Dortmund 
               Postfach 500500
               4600 Dortmund 50
               Renunited States of Germany