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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: CL grammar ambiguities?
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 16:55:07 GMT
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In article <3ia6hi$509@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> gjm11@can.pmms.cam.ac.uk (Gareth McCaughan) writes:
>In article <3i5dpq$a90@tools.near.net>,
>Barry Margolin <barmar@nic.near.net> wrote:
>
>> Of course, the precision of these formal semantics hinges on the precision
>> of VDM and Denotational Semantics.  Are these defined with absolute
>> precision?  And if so, how about the formalism upon which they're defined?
>>
>> According to Godel's Theorem, no sufficiently powerful formal system can be
>> defined with absolute precision.
>
>Errrrm. The sort of systems we're talking about here are nowhere near
>to being "sufficiently powerful", surely.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they are.  A denotational semantics is
rather like an interpreter in lambda-calculus.

-- jeff
