Mapping Object Descriptions to Behaviours 1
Oscar Nierstrasz · 1988
There is a lack of good formalisms and tools for describing the semantics of object-oriented and concurrent programming languages. We propose a computational model for objects in which events are synchronous communications between concurrent agents, computations are partial orderings of events, and behaviours are the possible event unfoldings in which an agent, or a system of concurrent agents, may participate. Furthermore, we introduce a language called Abacus for defining executable behaviour expressions, and we speculate how this language may be used as part of a practical system for defining the formal semantics of programming languages.