THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF SPLAW-AN AGENT SPECIFICATION AND PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Fan Xiao · Chinese Journal of Computers · 1998
Slnce AOP was proposed by Shoham, the agent-oriented methodology has been studied from different aspects-However, whether and how much a new methodology can be accepted mainly depends on whether the language reflecting this new methodology can be used widely or not. For this purpose, it is very important to design a suitable programming language for agent. This paper descr1bes the syntax of an agent specification and programming language-SPLAW, provides operational semantics for each statement defined in SPLAW, and by means of labeled transition systeml presents the proof rules which can be used to prove the properties such as safety and liveness. SPLAW has at least the following advantages. First, it is based on KQML, the standard inter-agent communication language, which rnakes it possible for agents written in SPLAW to interoperate with other agents obeying KQML. Second, the feature of inheritance is first supported by an agent programming language, which facilitates the construction of multi-thread systems that take on some object-oriented features. Last but not least, instead of adopting built-in modalities in the programming language, SPLAW try to assign mental states such as belief, intention and desire for agents from external viewpoint, which may provide a feasible solution to unify the fields of theory research and practical system design.