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Executing continuation semantics: A comparison
Author(s) -
Slonneger Ken
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380231206
Subject(s) - programming language , denotational semantics , computer science , interpreter , denotational semantics of the actor model , normalisation by evaluation , semantics (computer science) , action semantics , continuation , implementation , operational semantics , fifth generation programming language , prolog , computational semantics , formal semantics (linguistics) , programming paradigm
Several authors have suggested translating denotational semantics into prototype interpreters written in high‐level programming languages to provide evaluation tools for language designers. These implementations have generally been understandable when restricted to direct denotational semantics. This paper considers using two declarative programming languages, Prolog and Standard ML, to implement an interpreter that follows the continuation semantics of a small imperative programming language, called Gull. Each of the two declarative languages presents certain difficulties related to evaluation strategies and expressiveness. The implementations are compared in terms of their ease of use for prototyping, their resemblance to the denotational definitions, and their efficiency.