Actor semantics of PLANNER-73

ABSTRACT

Work on PLANNER-73 and actors has led to the development of a basis for semantics of programming languages. Its value in describing programs with side-effects, parallelism, and synchronization is discussed. Formal definitions are written and explained for sequences, cells, and a simple synchronization primitive. In addition there is discussion of the implications of actor semantics for the controversy over elimination of side-effects.

REFERENCES

• 1: Balzer, R. M. "PORTS- A Method for Dynamic Interprogram Communication and Job Control" 1971 SJCC.
• 2: G.M. Birtwhistle , O.J. Dahl , B. Myhrhaug , K. Nygaard, Simula Begin, Chartwell-Bratt Ltd, 1979
• 3: Bobrow, D. and Wegbreit, Ben. "A Model for Control Structures for Artificial Intelligence Programming Languages" IJCAI-73. August, 1973.
• 4: Melvin E. Conway, Design of a separable transition-diagram compiler, Communications of the ACM, v.6 n.7, p.396-408, July 1963 [doi>10.1145/366663.366704]
• 5: Davies, D. J. M. "POPLER 1.5 Reference Manual" TPU Report No. 1. Theoretical Psychology Unit, School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh. May, 1973.
• 6: E. W. Dijkstra, Solution of a problem in concurrent programming control, Communications of the ACM, v.8 n.9, p.569, Sept. 1965 [doi>10.1145/365559.365617]
• 7: Michael J. Fischer, Lambda calculus schemata, Proceedings of ACM conference on Proving assertions about programs, p.104-109, January 06-07, 1972, Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States
• 8: Hewitt, C. "Description and Theoretical Analysis {Using Schemata} of PLANNER: A Language for Proving Theorems and Manipulating Models for a Robot" Phd. MIT. February, 1971.
• 9: Hewitt, C., Bishop P., and Steiger, R. "A Universal Modular Actor Formalism for Artificial Intelligence" IJCAI-73. Stanford, Calif. Aug, 1973. pp. 235-245.
• 10: C. A. R. Hoare, An axiomatic basis for computer programming, Communications of the ACM, v.12 n.10, p.576-580, Oct. 1969 [doi>10.1145/363235.363259]
• 11: C. A. R. Hoare, Monitors: an operating system structuring concept, Communications of the ACM, v.17 n.10, p.549-557, Oct. 1974 [doi>10.1145/355620.361161]
• 12: Donald E. Knuth, Additional comments on a problem in concurrent programming control, Communications of the ACM, v.9 n.5, p.321-322, May 1966 [doi>10.1145/355592.365595]
• 13: Rudolph A. Krutar, Conversational systems programming by incremental extension of system configuration, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.6 n.12, p.113-116, December 1971
• 14: P. J. Landin, Correspondence between ALGOL 60 and Church's Lambda-notation: part I, Communications of the ACM, v.8 n.2, p.89-101, Feb. 1965 [doi>10.1145/363744.363749]
• 15: Mazurkiewicz, A. "Proving Algorithms by Tail Functions" Information and Control. 1971.
• 16: McCarthy, J. "A Formal Description of a Subset of Algol" in Formal Language Description Languages for Computer Programming. North Holland Publishing Company. 1964.
• 17: McDermott, D. V., and Sussman G. J. "The Conniver Reference Manual" A.I. Memo No. 259. 1972.
• 18: Mitchell, J. G. "The Modular Programming System: Processes and Ports" NIC 7359. June, 1971.
• 19: Johns Frederick Rulifson, Language-qa4: a procedural calculus for intuitive reasoning., 1973
• 20: Scott, D. and Strachey, C. "Towards a Mathematical Semantics for Computer Languages" Oxford University Computing Laboratory. August, 1971.
• 21: Smith, Brian and Hewitt, Carl. "Towards a Programming Apprentice' AISB Conference. July 1974.
• 22: vanWijngaarden, A., "Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL-68" Mathematische Centrum. 1969,