CS522 - Programming Language Semantics (Fall 2018)

Students enrolled in this class are expected to check this web page regularly. Lecture notes and important other material will be posted here.

Course Description

CS522 is an advanced course on semantics of programming languages. Various semantic approaches and related aspects will be defined and investigated. Executable semantics of various programming languages and paradigms will be discussed, together with major theoretical models.

• Meetings: Tu/Th 9:30 - 10:45, 1103 Siebel Center
• Professor: Grigore Rosu (Office: SC 2110, WWW: http://fsl.cs.illinois.edu/grosu, Email: grosu@illinois.edu)
• Office hours: By appointment, very flexible (held by Grigore Rosu in SC 2110)

Piazza Page

CS522 Piazza Page

Lecture Notes, Useful Material

The links below provide you with useful material for this class, including complete lecture notes. These materials will be added by need and more topics will be added.

• Introduction

• Conventional Semantic Approaches

• Slides (PDF) Slides (PPTX) (incomplete)
• Book material on IMP, Big-Step SOS, Small-Step SOS, and Denotational Semantics
• Rewriting Logic and Maude

• slides - recommended only for a quick look
• Book material - recommended

HW1 (due Tuesday, September 18)

The following exercises are from the book material above. Do them only in Maude (that is, not on paper) by modifying the provided Maude code for HW1 ): Exercise 56 (page 137); Exercise 70 (page 155). In case you are not familiar with Maude, you are encouraged to do the following exercises to warm-up (but please do not include them as part of your HW1 submission): Exercise 30; Exercise 32; Exercise 33; Exercise 35; Exercise 36. All at pages 80/81.

HW2 (due Wednesday, October 3 - easy HW, so earlier submission possible and appreciated)
The following exercises related to denotational semantics are from the book material above: Exercises 80, 81, 82 ((page 168; write these up on paper, or in a PDF); Exercise 83 (page 169; do it only in Maude (that is, not on paper) by modifying the provided Maude code for HW2 ).

• Book material on IMP++: Challenging Big-Step SOS, Small-Step SOS, and Denotational Semantics

HW3 (due Monday, October 15)
Combine all the individual extensions of IMP in the provided Maude code for HW3 into the IMP++ language. Read the book material above for all the technical details. You should create a subfolder of imp called 6-imp++, and that should have four subfolders, one for each semantic style. Provide also three IMP++ programs.

• Book material on Modular SOS, Evaluation Contexts, and the CHAM

HW4 (due Monday, October 29)
Same as HW3 but for the three additional semantic approaches discussed in the lecture notes above: MSOS, RSEC, and CHAM. Use this provided Maude code for HW4 . Handle also a short essay discussing the advantages and limitations of each of the semantic approaches discussed so far in class, assigning a (justified) score between 1 and 10 to each of them.

• Category theory: definition, diagrams, cones and limits, exponentials

• Slides
• Hand written notes on category theory properties

• Lambda Calculus and Combinatory Logic

• Slides
• Book material on Lambda Calculus and Combinatory Logic
• Hand written notes on CCC models of untyped Lambda Calculus

HW5 (due Monday, November 12)

This is a theoretical HW, requiring you to do three proofs using category theory. You are strongly encouraged to do *all* the exercises in the slides, especially if you did not have prior experience with category theory. However, for his HW, only handle the following three exercises: (1, easy) Exercise 8 on slide 20 in the category theory slides ; (2, easy) Property 1 on `category theory - 3.png` in the hand written notes on category theory properties ; and (3, harder) Lemma on slide `ccc-untyped-lambda - 3.png` in the hand written notes on CCC models of untyped lambda calculus .

• Simply-Typed Lambda Calculus

• Basic notions: type system, equational semantics, models, completeness. Slides
• Cartesian Closed Categories as models for simply-typed lambda-calculus. Slides

HW6 (due Friday, November 30---can also take the weekend if needed)
Proposition 8 from the slides on simply-typed lambda calculus. Exercises 5 and 6 from the slides on CCCs.

• Recursion, Types, Polymorphism

• Recursion and Types. Slides
• Polymorphism.