article · 2008

Operational semantics

David Walker, Steve Zdancewic, Jay Ligatti

Cited by 0Abstract and details only

Abstract

This paper define the semantics of MinAML, an idealized aspect-oriented programming language, by giving a typedirected translation from its user-friendly external language to its compact, well-defined core language. We argue that our framework is an effective way to give semantics to aspectoriented programming languages in general because the translation eliminates shallow syntactic differences between related constructs and permits definition of a clean, easy-tounderstand, and easy-to-reason-about core language. The core language extends the simply-typed lambda calculus with two central new abstractions: explicitly labeled program points and first-class advice. The labels serve both to trigger advice and to mark continuations that the advice may return to. These constructs are defined orthogonally to the other features of the language and we show that our abstractions can be used in both functional and object-oriented contexts. The labels are well-scoped and the language as a whole is well-typed. Consequently, programmers can use lexical scoping in the standard way to prevent aspects from interfering with local program invariants. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.3.1 [Formal Definitions and Theory]: Semantics; D.3.3

Cite this paper

APA 7

Walker, D., Zdancewic, S., & Ligatti, J. (2008). Operational semantics.

MLA 9

Walker, David, et al. “Operational semantics.” 2008.

Chicago

Walker, David, Steve Zdancewic, and Jay Ligatti. 2008. “Operational semantics.”

Harvard

Walker, D., Zdancewic, S. and Ligatti, J. (2008) ‘Operational semantics’.

BibTeX

@article{walker2008operational,
  title = {{Operational semantics}},
  author = {Walker, David and Zdancewic, Steve and Ligatti, Jay},
  year = {2008}
}

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