Need C language Description

Mikael Pettersson mikpe at miraculix.liu.se
Tue Aug 2 03:20:02 AEST 1988


In article <1112 at garth.UUCP> smryan at garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
> [...]
>If there was a formal definition, three-quarters of the topics in
>comp.lang.c would never appear.

Since 50% of the garbage in comp.lang.c is written because people don't
even read their K&R or H&S properly, how can you expect them to understand
the kind of mathematical definition found in, say, denotational or axiomatic
semantics?

I would like to see a C _language_ (no libraries) definition similair to
R3RS (Revised^3 Report on the Algirithmic Language Scheme, can be found in
SIGPLAN Dec-86): background, formal syntax, a general description of each
construct in the language, and finally a denotational semantics definition.

I believe Ravi Sethi wrote such a definition for an ACM conference back in
1980 but I haven't seen it (yet).


Mike
-- 
Mikael Pettersson           ! Internet:mpe at ida.liu.se
Dept of Comp & Info Science ! UUCP:    mpe at liuida.uucp  -or-
University of Linkoping     !          {mcvax,munnari,uunet}!enea!liuida!mpe
Sweden                      ! ARPA:    mpe%ida.liu.se at uunet.uu.net



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