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A newbie question, if I may... Could you be so kind and explain to me in plain english meaning of 'denotational semantics' and 'operational semantics'? I'm familiar with the definitions and have read a lot of other material, but still struggling with these concepts. Probalby I need some use cases... or a practical exercise :)

How to define denotational and operational semantics for a given programming language? Can it be done for any language or there are any prereqs? What is the usual approach: if I have a description of a PL, for instance, how to build these two semantics for it? What should I start with? What should I get at the end of the exercise?

Many thanks...

svetlana
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    See: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3577/what-constitutes-denotational-semantics?rq=1, http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3670/formal-semantics-of-programming-languages?rq=1, and http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3533/books-on-programming-language-semantics?rq=1 – Dave Clarke Feb 23 '13 at 14:48
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    As this question is not research-level theoretical computer science, and, in particular, because it has been answered before, I'm inclined to close it. Perhaps if you have a more specific question, you can ask on [CS.SE]. – Dave Clarke Feb 23 '13 at 14:52

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