Symbolic Evaluation Using Conceptual Respresentations for Programs with Side-Effects.

Abstract

Symbolic evaluation is a process which abstractly evaluates a program on abstract data. A formalism based on conceptual representations is proposed as a specification language for programs with side-effects. Relations between algebraic specifications and specifications based on conceptual representations are discussed and limitations of the current algebraic specification techniques are pointed out. Symbolic evaluation is carried out with explicit use of a notion of situations. Uses of situational tags in assertions make it possible to state relations about properties of objects in different situations. The proposed formalism can deal with problems of side-effects which have been beyond the scope of Floyd-Hoare proof rules and give a solution to McCarthy's frame problem. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1976
Accession Number
ADA038244

Entities

People

  • Akinori Yonezawa
  • Carl Hewitt

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Contracts
  • Databases
  • Debugging
  • Language
  • Military Research
  • Programming Languages
  • Reasoning
  • Side Effects
  • Software Development
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Verification

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.