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Evaluation of Denotational Semantics

• Advantages:
  • Compact & precise, with solid mathematical foundation
  • Provides a rigorous way to think about programs
  • Can be used to prove the correctness of programs
  • Can be an aid to language design
  • Has been used in compiler generation systems

• Disadvantages
  • Requires mathematical sophistication
  • Hard for programmer to use

• Uses
  • Semantics for Algol-60, Pascal, etc.
  • Compiler generation and optimization