In 1959 John Backus presented a paper on a proposed international algebraic language which evolved into ALGOL 60. This set of two volumes aims to review the attempts over recent years to use programming languages based on ALGOL 60, using Backus' original document as an introduction.

Equations occur in many computer applications, such as symbolic compu tation, functional programming, abstract data type specifications, program verification, program synthesis, and automated theorem proving. Rewrite systems are directed equations used to compute by replacing subterms in a given formula by equal terms until a simplest form possible, called a normal form, is obtained. The theory of rewriting is concerned with the compu tation of normal forms. We shall study the use of rewrite techniques for reasoning about equations. Reasoning about equations may, for instance, involve...

The third Conference on Computation and Control was held at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana from August 5-11, 1992, and this contains a collection of papers addressing issues including noise abatement via smart material technology, robotic vision and parameter identification.

This is a book about isomorphisms 0/ types, arecent difficult research topic in type theory that turned out to be able to have valuable practical applications both for programming language design and far more human- centered information retrieval in software libraries. By means of a deep study of the syntax of the now widely known typed A-ca1culus, it is possible to identify some simple equations between types that on one hand allow to improve the design of the ML language, and on the other hand provide the basis for building radically new information retrieval systems for functional software...

In recent years there has been a remarkable convergence of interest in programming languages based on ALGOL 60. Researchers interested in the theory of procedural and object-oriented languages discovered that ALGOL 60 shows how to add procedures and object classes to simple imperative languages in a general and clean way. And, on the other hand, researchers interested in purely functional languages discovered that ALGOL 60 shows how to add imperative mechanisms to functional languages in a way that does not compromise their desirable properties. Unfortunately, many of the key works in this...

by Luea Cardelli Ever since Strachey's work in the 1960's, polymorphism has been classified into the parametric and overloading varieties. Parametric polymorphism has been the subject of extensive study for over two decades. Overloading, on the other hand, has often been considered too ad hoc to deserve much attention even though it has been, in some form, an ingredient of virtually every programming lan guage (much more so than parametric polymorphism). With the introduction of object-oriented languages, and in particular with multiple-dispatch object-oriented languages, overloading has...

During the last three decades several different styles of semantics for program ming languages have been developed. This book compares two of them: the operational and the denotational approach. On the basis of several exam ples we show how to define operational and denotational semantic models for programming languages. Furthermore, we introduce a general technique for comparing various semantic models for a given language. We focus on different degrees of nondeterminism in programming lan guages. Nondeterminism arises naturally in concurrent languages. It is also an important concept in...

Combinatory logic started as a programme in the foundation of mathematics and in an historical context at a time when such endeavours attracted the most gifted among the mathematicians. This small volume arose under quite differ ent circumstances, namely within the context of reworking the mathematical foundations of computer science. I have been very lucky in finding gifted students who agreed to work with me and chose, for their Ph. D. theses, subjects that arose from my own attempts 1 to create a coherent mathematical view of these foundations. The result of this collaborative work is...

1.1. What This Book is About This book is a study of subrecursive programming systems, efficiency/program-size trade-offs between such systems, and how these systems can serve as tools in complexity theory. Section 1.1 states our basic themes, and Sections 1.2 and 1.3 give a general outline of the book. Our first task is to explain what subrecursive programming systems are and why they are of interest. 1.1.1. Subrecursive Programming Systems A subrecursive programming system is, roughly, a programming language for which the result of running any given program on any given input can be...