Review of A Theory of Object s Series : Monographs in Computer Scienc e Authors : Martin Abadi and Luca Cardell i Publisher : Springer-Verlag, 199 6 ISBN : 0-387-94775- 2 $44 .95, Hardcover, 396 pages Reviewer : Brian Postow 1 Overview When a new programming language is designed it is sometimes useful to have a formal languag e in which we can describe with mathematical rigor what a program in that language is doing . This mathematical language can be thought of as a semantics of the programming language . If th e semantics is sufficiently well developed we can use it to prove that a program does what we thin k it does . No actual programmer ever does this, but it is comforting to know that it can be done . There are several different mathematical languages for giving the semantics of imperative programming languages (e .g . C or Pascal) . Control flow graphs, or logical invariants can be used fo r this . There are also several different A calculi for describing the semantics of functional program ming languages (e .g. Lisp or ML) . Likewise we can use classical logic and resolution
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