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What is the meaning of these constant interruptions?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2007

GRAHAM HUTTON  and
JOEL WRIGHT
GRAHAM HUTTON
Affiliation:
School of Computer Science and IT, University of Nottingham, UK
JOEL WRIGHT
Affiliation:
School of Computer Science and IT, University of Nottingham, UK
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Abstract

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Asynchronous exceptions, or interrupts, are important for writing robust, modular programs, but are traditionally viewed as being difficult from a semantic perspective. In this article, we present a simple, formally justified, semantics for interrupts. Our approach is to show how a high-level semantics for interrupts can be justified with respect to a low-level implementation, by means of a compiler and its correctness theorem. In this manner we obtain two different perspectives on the problem, formally shown to be equivalent, which gives greater confidence in the correctness of our semantics.

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Type
Article
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 17 , Issue 6 , November 2007 , pp. 777 - 792
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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