-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 3/18/11 00:43 , Conal Elliott wrote:
Speaking of which, for a while now I've been interested in designs of make-like systems that have precise & simple (denotational) semantics with pleasant properties. What Peter Landin called "denotative" (as opposed to functional-looking but semantically ill-defined or intractable).
Norman Ramsey (cc'd) pointed me to the Vesta http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.19.8468 system from DEC SRC. If anyone knows of other related experiments, I'd appreciate hearing.
Back in the late 1980s there were several attempts at this kind of thing; the ones that stick in my mind are Shape[1] and Cake[2]. Their declarative/denotative abilities were primitive at best, but they helped shape further development and I find these papers often cited in later research. [1] http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=30B4EC21BAD13166AFBEBB20246221B8?doi=10.1.1.55.6969&rep=rep1&type=pdf (http://tinyurl.com/4l79vg4) [2] http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~zs/papers/cake.ps.gz - -- brandon s. allbery [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl] allbery.b@gmail.com system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] kf8nh -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk2Khm0ACgkQIn7hlCsL25X+lgCeP4U8lUcVOvLKQQVcmbAhLT11 dvMAoIabif8gGlsLKnvg0e3ZKqgVpPVn =ApVq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----