BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: SBCS//stark/stmalo.ps.Z
       ENTRY:: April 5, 1995
ORGANIZATION:: State University of New York at Stony Brook, Computer Science
       TITLE:: On Formally Defining Debuggers
        TYPE:: Preprint
      AUTHOR:: Bernstein, Karen L., and Stark, Eugene W.
     CONTACT:: Eugene W. Stark, Department of Computer Science,
                   SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4400
                   Tel: 516-632-8444 <stark@cs.sunysb.edu>
	DATE:: April, 1995
   RETRIEVAL:: HTTP from BSD7.CS.SUNYSB.EDU with the URL
		   http://bsd7.cs.sunysb.edu/~stark/REPORTS/stmalo.ps.gz

ABSTRACT::

Although there is a large body of literature on formal definitions of
programming languages, relatively little work has been done in
applying formal techniques to defining debuggers.  Natural operational
semantics, denotational semantics and transitional operational
semantics are all proven techniques for formally defining programming
languages.  In this paper we present techniques for formally defining
debuggers based on each of these three styles of definitions.  We will
investigate each style of definition by demonstrating how a simple
debugger might be defined in each framework.