Paper Info
Title
Sequence operators: specifying behavioral interfaces of Smalltalk blocks
Abstract
The ability to treat code as data within a programming language is a powerful feature. Smalltalk introduces an object called a block that represents code as data. We propose a formal description technique to specify the behavior of Smalltalk blocks. The traditional Hoare-style pre- and postcondition technique is extended to incorporate two new predicate composition operators called a sequence operator and a sequential quantifier. The sequence operator combines two predicates by identifying the post-state of the first predicate and the pre-state of the second predicate. The sequential quantifier is an extension of sequence operator to a sequence of predicates. We illustrate our approach by using Smalltalk blocks, but the approach is not in any way Smalltalk specific. It can be applied to closures in other programming languages
Year
DOI
Venue
1999
10.1109/APSEC.1999.809638
APSEC
Keywords
Field
DocType
programming languages,specifying behavioral interfaces,programming language,powerful feature,predicate composition operators,formal description technique,user interfaces,smalltalk blocks,specification languages,postcondition technique,hoare-style,behavioral interface specification,sequence operator,programming theory,smalltalk specific,object-oriented programming,traditional hoare-style pre,formal logic,smalltalk,sequential quantifier,new predicate composition operator,sequence operators,smalltalk block,formal specification,formal verification,computer languages,formal semantics,data structures,object oriented programming,composition operator,specification language,natural languages
Specification language,Programming language,Object-oriented programming,Computer science,Smalltalk,Theoretical computer science,Formal specification,Operator (computer programming),Predicate (grammar),User interface,Postcondition
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-7695-0509-0
0
0.34
References 
Authors
4
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yoonsik Cheon177056.20
Heung-Nam Kim256337.59