- Author
- Not stated
- Published
- Last edited 6 November 2026
- Kind
- Wikipedia reference article on a theory of programming language meaning
- Original
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denotational_semantics
- Subject
- Formal methods and proof
What it is
Volunteer editors wrote this overview. It explains an approach to formal semantics and its main variations. It is meant as an introduction and a pointer to the literature.
What it says
- Denotational semantics gives programs meaning by building mathematical objects called denotations.
- The article names compositionality as a tenet: meanings are built from subphrases.
- The approach began with Strachey and Scott in the early 1970s.
- A recursive function such as factorial gets meaning as the limit of ever better approximations.
- State is modelled by treating a command as a partial function on states.
- Many researchers argued domain models do not suffice for concurrency, so new models arose.
- Full abstraction for PCF stayed open long, and was mostly resolved in the 1990s.
What evidence it gives
The article offers a worked factorial example and definitions. It cites founding monographs by Scott and Strachey, later papers and textbooks. It does not run experiments.
Interests and limits
Volunteers wrote the article and no single author stands behind it. It summarises a theoretical field and tests no tool. Several sections are brief and rely on cited papers that were not checked. It assumes some mathematical background.