bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) (08/14/90)
Although the following book talks only a little about Eiffel, it may be of interest to readers of this newsgroup. Title: Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages Publisher: Prentice-Hall International Pages: xvi+448 Author: Bertrand Meyer ISBN: 0-13-498510-9 0-13-498502-8 (paperback, outside US only). Published: July 1990 Contents: Chapter 1 Basic concepts 2 Mathematical background 3 Syntax 4 Semantics: the main approaches 5 Lambda calculus 6 Denotational semantics: fundamentals 7 Denotational semantics: language features 8 The mathematics of recursion 9 Axiomatic semantics 10 The consistency of semantic definitions Exercises after most chapters. Bibliography (112 entries). Index. From the back cover blurb: Understanding programming and programming languages requires mastering the underlying theoretical models. This book explores the main methods for describing programming language syntax and semantics, with particular emphasis on abstract syntax, axiomatic semantics and denotational semantics. It demonstrates the complementarity between axiomatic and denotational methods. All mathematical concepts are explained in the text; the discussion constantly stresses applications to practical programming problems.