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From: Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>
Subject: Re: python operational semantics paper
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 05:42:35 -0500
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:58999

On 11/9/2013 1:35 PM, Paul Rubin wrote:
> This looks kind of interesting.
>
> http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/pmmwplck-python-full-monty/
>
> Abstract
>
> We present a small-step operational semantics for the Python programming
> language. We present both a core language for Python, suitable for tools
> and proofs, and a translation process for converting Python source to
> this core. We have tested the composition of translation and evaluation
> of the core for conformance with the primary Python implementa- tion,
> thereby giving confidence in the fidelity of the seman- tics. We briefly
> report on the engineering of these compo- nents. Finally, we examine
> subtle aspects of the language, identifying scope as a pervasive concern
> that even impacts features that might be considered orthogonal.

Thanks for posting this. I found it very interesting but will need more 
time to digest it. I plan to open a separate thread based on one item in 
the paper.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy