Tabular Representation of Relations
David Lorge Parnas · 1992
Multi-dimensional mathematical expressions, called tables, have proven to be useful for documenting digital systems. This paper describes 10 classes of tables, giving their syntax and semantics. Several abbreviations that can be useful in tables are introduced. Simple examples are provided. 1 Introduction In earlier papers, [1,2], we have shown how the documentation required for the professional construction and use of computing systems can consist of descriptions of a set of mathematical relations. Those papers discuss the documents very abstractly; the contents of the documents are specified without restricting the notations or formats to be used. This paper complements the earlier papers by defining multidimensional notations (which we call tabular expressions) that have proven useful for describing the specified mathematical functions in practical applications [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. A companion paper [9], presents an interpretation of logical expressions that is designed for these...