ASMs versus Natural Semantics: A Comparison with New Insights

摘要

We compare three specification frameworks for the operational semantics of programming languages, abstract state machines (ASMs) and the two incarnations of natural semantics, big-step and small-step semantics, with respect to two criteria: the range of imperative programming languages to which they are applicable and the way the program is used in the specifications and treated during the thereby defined execution. To reveal the fundamental differences between these three mechanism, we investigate if there are automatic transformations between them. As a side effect, this leads to new insights concerning the classification of big-step and small-step semantics.