Strategies and simulations in a semantic framework

By means of several examples of structural operational semantics for a variety of languages, we justify the importance and interest of using the notions of strategies and simulations in the semantic framework provided by rewriting logic and implemented in the Maude metalanguage. On the one hand, we describe a basic strategy language for Maude and show its application to CCS, the ambient calculus, and the parallel functional language Eden. On the other hand, we show how the concept of stuttering simulation can be used inside Maude to show that a stack machine correctly implements the operational semantics of a simple functional language. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.