Kings College Publications Programming Languages and Operational Semantics

This book provides a concise introduction to the essential concepts inprogramming languages, using techniques from operational semantics. It isaddressed to undergraduate students, as a complement to programminglanguages or operational semantics courses.There are three parts in the book, highlighting three majorprogramming paradigms:- imperative languages: the main features of these languages are illustrated using Java, C, Pascal- functional languages: modern languages such as ML and Haskell are used to describe the functional style of programming- logic languages: the last part of the book gives an overview of logic programming using Prolog.After a general description of each family of languages, theirsemantics are studied using abstract machines and structuraloperational semantics. The book gives an in-depth analysis of thebasic concepts in programming languages instead of a mere survey oflanguages, privileging the understanding of the basic techniquesunderlying the semantics of languages over simply describing theirproperties.