Programming Languages And Operational Semantics

programming languages, using techniques from operational semantics. It is

addressed to undergraduate students, as a complement to programming

languages or operational semantics courses.

There are three parts in the book, highlighting three major

programming paradigms:

- imperative languages: the main features of these

languages are illustrated using Java, C, Pascal

- functional languages: modern languages such as ML and Haskell are

used to describe the functional style of programming

- logic languages: the last part of the book gives an overview of

logic programming using Prolog.

After a general description of each family of languages, their

semantics are studied using abstract machines and structural

operational semantics. The book gives an in-depth analysis of the

basic concepts in programming languages instead of a mere survey of

languages, privileging the understanding of the basic techniques

underlying the semantics of languages over simply describing their

properties.