Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Semantics of programs

Prabhakar Mateti

Wright State University

Semantics of programs is an area of computer science that seeks to
answer the following question. Given a sentence P written according to
the grammar G of a programming language L. What mathematical function
F does P define? In the absence of a definitive answer, attempts to
reduce the number of bugs in programs remains a craft instead of being
an engineering discipline based on logic and discrete mathematics.
Hundreds of papers have appeared in the subareas known as Operational
Semantics, Axiomatic semantics, Denotational semantics, et al.
Whereas the CS field has effective answers to the questions of
determining if a given P is in L, and whether G generates L, no
satisfactory answers exist to the question of does P define the/a
function F. This talk is an overview these questions and answers.