Exploiting Labels in Structural Operational Semantics

Issue title: Concurrency Specification and Programming (CS&P 2003)

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Mosses, Peter D.

Affiliations: BRICS & Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, IT-parken, Aabogade 34, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark

Abstract: Structural Operational Semantics (SOS) allows transitions to be labelled. This is fully exploited in SOS descriptions of concurrent systems, but usually not at all in conventional descriptions of sequential programming languages. This paper shows how the use of labels can provide significantly simpler and more modular descriptions of programming languages. However, the full power of labels is obtained only when the set of labels is made into a category, as in the recently-proposed MSOS variant of SOS.

Keywords: Structural operational semantics, SOS, modularity, MSOS, natural semantics

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 60, no. 1-4, pp. 17-31, 2004