A modular monadic action semantics

Abstract

A Modular Monadic Action Semantics Masters Thesis Keith Wansbrough Department of Computer Science University of Auckland February 1997. Action semantics and modular monadic semantics are two independent approaches to the problem of specifying programming language semantics. Action semantics, developed by Mosses, is intended to be a system allowing "useful semantic descriptions of realistic programming languages"; its worth has been demonstrated by the existence of action semantic descriptions of a number of relatively large languages. Modular monadic semantics is a more recent system developed by Espinosa and Liang, Hudak and Jones based on work done by Moggi; it is essentially an extension of concept of monads currently enjoying wide use for the represention of state in functional languages. In this thesis we present modular monadic action semantics, a system that combines the best features of action semantics and modular monadic semantics. Modular monadic action semantics repl...