Modular first-order specifications of operational semantics

Abstract

This paper is about modular specification of operational semantics and the execution of such specifications. It gives a first-order specification of the semantics of a simple applicative programming language. This specification is modular in the sense that binding rules are specified independently of the concrete syntax of the language and that expression evaluation needs not consider any concept of names. We then propose a simple lemma generation technique that achieves the effect of partial evaluation to implement such specifications in Prolog.