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From: schwartz@groucho.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Subject: Formal definitions (Re: ada-c++ productivity)
In-Reply-To: chip@tct.com's message of 1 Apr 91 18:46:57 GMT
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	<EMERY.91Mar28111404@aries.mitre.org> <27F78021.1829@tct.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 23:46:51 GMT
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In article <27F78021.1829@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
   There are validation suites for ANSI C.  Of course, no validation
   suite -- not even the gummint's -- can guarantee that a compiler is
   bug-free.

How do you know that the validation suit tests for the language that
ANSI specified?  Some languages, like Turing, were formally specified
from the time of inception; you can run a program and mechanically
decide if it did what the language definition said it should do.