Summary: ALGORITHMIC GAME SEMANTICS
A Tutorial Introduction
SAMSON ABRAMSKY (samson@comlab.ox.ac.uk)
Oxford University Computing Laboratory
1. Introduction
Game Semantics has emerged as a powerful paradigm for giving semantics to
a variety of programming languages and logical systems. It has been used to
construct the first syntax­independent fully abstract models for a spectrum of pro­
gramming languages ranging from purely functional languages to languages with
non­functional features such as control operators and locally­scoped references
[4, 21, 5, 19, 2, 22, 17, 11]. A substantial survey of the state of the art of Game
Semantics circa 1997 was given in a previous Marktoberdorf volume [6].
Our aim in this tutorial presentation is to give a first indication of how Game
Semantics can be developed in a new, algorithmic direction, with a view to appli­
cations in computer­assisted verification and program analysis. Some promising
steps have already been taken in this direction. Hankin and Malacaria have applied
Game Semantics to program analysis, e.g. to certifying secure information flows
in programs [25]. A particularly striking development was the work by Ghica and
McCusker [15] which captures the game semantics of a fragment of Idealized
Algol in a remarkably simple form as regular expressions. This leads to a decision

Source: Abramsky, Samson - Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences