Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!enea!liuida!mikpe
From: mikpe@miraculix.liu.se (Mikael Pettersson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Need C language Description
Keywords: formal semantics
Message-ID: <843@miraculix.liu.se>
Date: 1 Aug 88 17:20:02 GMT
References: <12707@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1104@garth.UUCP> <8270@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1112@garth.UUCP>
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
Lines: 25

In article <1112@garth.UUCP> smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
> [...]
>If there was a formal definition, three-quarters of the topics in
>comp.lang.c would never appear.

Since 50% of the garbage in comp.lang.c is written because people don't
even read their K&R or H&S properly, how can you expect them to understand
the kind of mathematical definition found in, say, denotational or axiomatic
semantics?

I would like to see a C _language_ (no libraries) definition similair to
R3RS (Revised^3 Report on the Algirithmic Language Scheme, can be found in
SIGPLAN Dec-86): background, formal syntax, a general description of each
construct in the language, and finally a denotational semantics definition.

I believe Ravi Sethi wrote such a definition for an ACM conference back in
1980 but I haven't seen it (yet).


Mike
-- 
Mikael Pettersson           ! Internet:mpe@ida.liu.se
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