Abstract

Formal semantic description is significant for design, reasoning and standardization of programming languages, and it plays an important part in the optimization of the compiler. However, compared to the amount of effort that has been made to the research of various semantic frameworks over more than forty years, their actual applications are definitely frustrating. This survey reviews the history of developments on semantic description frame-works for programming languages. It also illustrates features and actual applications of the main frameworks (including operational, deno-tational, axiomatic and hybrid semantics). In some practical aspects, such as comprehensibility, extensibility and applicability, the qualitative comparisons of these frameworks are given distinctly. It suggests that a more popular formal semantic description should behave more elegantly in readability, modularity, abstractness, comparability, reasonability, applicability and tool-support.