Reasoning with Actions

Søren Bøgh Lassen

In 6th NWPT, pages 251-265

Abstract:

Action semantics is a semantic description framework with very good pragmatic properties but a rather weak theory for reasoning about programs. A strong action theory would be of great practical use, however. It would make it possible to reason about the large class of programming languages that can be described in action semantics.

This paper develops the foundations for a richer action theory, by bringing together concepts and techniques from testing theory for processes and from work on operational reasoning about functional programs. Semantic preorders and equivalences in the action semantics setting are studied and a useful operational technique for establishing testing equivalences is presented.

Comments
BRICS, Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

Available as PostScript, DVI.

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