Some facile chemistry

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we use the chemical abstract machine (CHAM) framework [BeB90, BeB92, Bou94] for discussing various semantics for the Facile programming language [GMP89, GMP90, FAR93] and for formalising (parts of) its implementations. We use these formal descriptions to argue (informally) about implementability and cost of implementation in terms of low level machinery needed to implement the given semantics. We take the Facile language as source for discussion, but the results also apply to several other new languages such as CML [Rep91, BMT92] and Poly/ML [Mat91]. Characteristic for all these languages is that they combine ideas from the λ-calculus and process algebra, such as CCS [Mil80, Mil89], to support high level constructs for programming concurrent, parallel and/or distributed systems. The full version of this extended summary can be found in [LeT94].