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- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!mucs!cliff
- From: cliff@cs.man.ac.uk (Cliff B Jones)
- Newsgroups: comp.theory
- Subject: History
- Message-ID: <1993Jan22.172329@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: 22 Jan 93 17:23:29 GMT
- Sender: news@cs.man.ac.uk
- Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.
- Lines: 58
-
- A Technical Report (details below) containing references to papers of
- historical interest in the area of `formal methods' is available
- either by FTP from
-
- m1.cs.man.ac.uk (130.88.13.4)
-
- pub/TR/umcs-92-12-2.ps.Z
-
- or in hard copy by e-mailing
-
- jenny@cs.man.ac.uk
-
- +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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- Formal Methods -- Selected Historical References
-
- C. B. Jones and A. M. McCauley
- Department of Computer Science
- University of Manchester
- Oxford Rd., Manchester, U.K.
-
- \date{1992-12-09}
-
- Abstract
-
- This report contains citations to papers which are of
- historical interest in the area of formal approaches
- to software development.
-
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-
- Also available in hard copy (no ftp for copyright reasons) is
-
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- The Search for Tractable Ways of Reasoning about Programs
-
- C.\ B.\ Jones
-
- \date{1992-03-31 (minor typographical errors corrected: 1992-06-23)}
-
- Abstract
-
- This paper traces the most important steps in the history of research
- on reasoning about programs.
- The main focus is on ways of verifying that sequential imperative
- programs satisfy their specifications.
- Over time it has become clear that {\em post facto} verification is
- only practical for small programs;
- verification methods which support the development of larger programs
- exploit a notation of compositionality.
- Coping with concurrent algorithms is much more challenging --
- this and other extensions are considered briefly.
- The main thesis is that the idea of reasoning about programs has been
- around for a long time;
- the search has been to find tractable methods.
-
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