Operational semantics for multi-language programs

• Published in: ACM transactions on programming languages and systems Vol. 31; no. 3; pp. 1 - 44
• Main Authors: Matthews, Jacob, Findler, Robert Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Association for Computing Machinery 01.04.2009
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Business; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Design engineering; Exact sciences and technology; Interoperability; Java (programming language); Memory and file management (including protection and security); Memory organisation. Data processing; Programming languages; Representations; Semantics; Software; Context; Equivalence relation; Type theory; Multilingualism; Operational semantics; Virtual machine; Termination problem; Garbage collector; Modeling; Detail level; Interoperability; ML language; Referential; Programming language; Storage management; Safety; Contract; Polymorphism

Interoperability is big business, a fact to which .NET, the JVM, and COM can attest. Language designers are well aware of this, and they are designing programming languages that reflect it—for instance, SML.NET, F#, Mondrian, and Scala all treat interoperability as a central design feature. Still, c...