The first half of the course presents Action Semantics (and may be taken as a separate 1-point course by PhD students). Action Semantics is based on a combination of Denotational and Operational Semantics, and the main principles of those frameworks are briefly reviewed at the start. The study of Action Semantics is supported by tools for testing the well-formedness and completeness of descriptions. The first half of the course concludes with a 2-week project involving the use of Action Semantics to describe a small programming language.

The second half of the course reviews the history of Compiler Generation, and studies state-of-the-art compiler-generators based on Action Semantics, Denotational Semantics, and Operational Semantics. The course concludes with a 1-week project involving a compiler-generator.

Further information about Action Semantics is available via the Action Semantics Home Page.