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ONT Re: Program Semantics




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| Algebraic Approaches to Program Semantics
|
| Part 1.  Denotational Semantics of Control
|
| Chapter 1.  An Introduction to Denotational Semantics
|
|
| 1.3.  A Functional Programming Fragment (cont.)
|
| If f in Pfn(X, Y), g in Pfn(Y, Z) arise as in (5) we may
| think of f, g as the computations of subalgorithms which
| can be chained together setting the output of f as the
| input of g to produce a net output in Z from an input
| in X.  The formal operation involved is as follows.
|
| 7.  Definition.  For f in Pfn(X, Y) and g in Pfn(Y, Z)
|     their 'composition' gf in Pfn(X, Z) is defined by:
|
|     DD(gf)   =  {x in X : x in DD(f) and f(x) in DD(g)},
|
|     (gf)(x)  =  g(f(x))  for x in DD(gf).
|
| Note that gf is total when f and g are.
|
| The functions studied in first-semester calculus are
| partial functions from the set of reals to itself (e.g.,
| DD(1/x) = {x : x =/= 0}, DD(arcsin x) = {x : -1 =< x =< 1},
| etc.).  The "chain rule" refers to the composition of (7),
| being a rule for the derivative of gf.  Composition of
| functions is sometimes called "chaining" because the
| output of one function is the input to the next,
| creating a chain of two links.  Longer chains
| arise in (12) below.
|
| Manes & Arbib, AAPS, page 14.
|
| Ernest G. Manes & Michael A. Arbib,
|'Algebraic Approaches to Program Semantics',
| Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 1986.

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