Functor-Category Semantics of Programming Languages and Logics
R.D. TennentAbstract: A category-theoretic technique for denotational- semantic description of programming languages has recently been developed by J C Reynolds and F J Oles. The first application was an ``abstract'' description of stack-oriented storage management in Algol 60-like programming languages. A more recent application has been to obtain a model of Reynold's ``specification logic'' that is non-operational and validates certain intuitively-true axioms; this application required ideas from topos theory. This paper is an introduction to the Reynolds-Oles technique and its applications. A novel feature of the presentation is the systematic use in functor categories of analogues to conventional domain constructions.
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