Practical Suggestions for Writing Understandable, Correct Formal Specifications.
Ralph Weischedel · Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) · 1980
The first half of this report is tutorial. It describes the three major classes of formal specification languages and argues that understandability is critical for formal specifications. Reasons why they are difficult to understand are identified, and practical suggestions for making them more understandable follow from that. The suggestions are illustrated by the specification of a pattern-matching facility. Three practical suggestions for checking the correctness of formal specifications follow. (Author)