Next: Locations and Updates Up: Terms Previous: Terms

Appropriate States and the Fun Notation

In addition to terms, we will define various other syntactic objects, e.g., update instructions and transition rules. We call a state S appropriate for a syntactic object s if Fun(S) includes the collection of function names that occur in s . By default (that is, unless explicitly defined differently), that collection will be denoted Fun(s).

In an appropriate state S, a ground term t = f(t1,...,tr) evaluates to an element Val_S(t) = f(Val_S(t1),...,Val_S(tr)). If [t] is a tuple (t1,...,tr) of terms, define ValS([t]) = (ValS(t1),...,ValS(tr)) .

An expression (t1=t2) may be a Boolean term or a metalanguage statement. Often it does not matter which it is. One can use two different equality signs or just try to be careful; we choose the second alternative.


huggins@acm.org
Thu Mar 23 17:30:35 EST 1995