Design and Implementation of a Debugger for an Abstract Machine

摘要

Conventional computer architectures do not allow us to unambiguously express our intent in a computer program. The combination of artificial data types and resource models force ambiguity and data structure over-loading. For example, the semantics of a stack combine those of an array structure and a last-in-first-out queue, while the entire stack structure is implemented in computer memory as a group of fixed length cells. This and other machine-data type dependencies can markedly hamper software portability. To overcome these obstacles, a means of formally specifying a computing machine's physical resources in an implementation independent way has been proposed. Creating an abstraction of the computer's physical resources in this manner lets the implementor of the specifications clearly determine the intent of programs written for it. This abstraction has come to be known as the Abstract Machine or AM.