LISP and Symbolic Computation, 9(1)7-76

Global State Considered Unnecessary: An Introduction to Object-Based Semantics

Uday S. Reddy, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL

Abstract: Semantics of imperative programming languages is traditionally described in terms of functions on global states. We propose here a novel approach based on a notion of objects and characterize them in terms of their observable behavior. States are regarded as part of the internal structure of objects and play no role in the observable behavior. It is shown that this leads to considerable accuracy in the semantic modelling of locality and single-threadedness properties of objects.

Keywords: imperative programs, syntactic control of interference, denotational semantics, objects

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May 2003 - hosc@brics.dk