Action Semantics is a novel approach to the formal description of programming languages. Its abstractness is at an intermediate level, between that of denotational and operational semantics. Action Semantics has considerable pragmatic advantages over all previous approaches, in its comprehensibility and accessibility, and especially in the usefulness of its semantic descriptions of realistic programming languages. In this volume, Dr Peter Mosses gives a thorough introduction to action semantics, and provides substantial illustrations of its use. Graduates of computer science or maths who have an interest in the semantics of programming languages will find Action Semantics a most helpful book.

CASL, the Common Algebraic Specification Language, was designed by the members of CoFI, the Common Framework Initiative for algebraic specification and development, and is a general-purpose language for practical use in software development for specifying both requirements and design. CASL is already regarded as a de facto standard, and various sublanguages and extensions are available for specific tasks.

This reference manual presents a detailed documentation of the CASL specification formalism. It reviews the main underlying concepts, and carefully summarizes the intended meaning of each construct of CASL. The book formally defines both the syntax and semantics of CASL, and presents a logic for reasoning about CASL specifications. Furthermore, extensive libraries of CASL specifications of basic data types are provided as well as a comprehensive annotated bibliography of CoFI publications.

As a separate, complementary book LNCS 2900 presents a tutorial introduction to CASL, the CASL User Manual.

CASL, the Common Algebraic Specification Language, was designed by the members of CoFI, the Common Framework Initiative for algebraic specification and development, and is a general-purpose language for practical use in software development for specifying both requirements and design. CASL is already regarded as a de facto standard, and various sublanguages and extensions are available for specific tasks.

This book illustrates and discusses how to write CASL specifications. The authors first describe the origins, aims and scope of CoFI, and review the main concepts of algebraic specification languages. The main part of the book explains CASL specifications, with chapters on loose, generated and free specifications, partial functions, sub- and supersorts, structuring specifications, genericity and reusability, architectural specifications, and version control. The final chapters deal with tool support and libraries, and present a realistic case study involving the standard benchmark for comparing specification frameworks. The book is aimed at software researchers and professionals, and follows a tutorial style with highlighted points, illustrative examples, and a full specification and library index.

A separate, complementary LNCS volume contains the CASL Reference Manual.

In 1996 the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) establ- hed its rst Technical Committee on foundations of computer science, TC1. The aim of IFIP TC1 is to support the development of theoretical computer science as a fundamental science and to promote the exploration of fundamental c- cepts, models, theories, and formal systems in order to understand laws, limits, and possibilities of information processing. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the rst IFIP International C- ference on Theoretical Computer Science (IFIP TCS 2000) { Exploring New Frontiers of Theoretical Informatics { organized by IFIP TC1, held at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan in August 2000. The IFIP TCS 2000 technical program consists of invited talks, contributed talks, and a panel discussion. In conjunction with this program there are two special open lectures by Professors Jan van Leeuwen and Peter D. Mosses. The decision to hold this conference was made by IFIP TC1 in August 1998, and since then IFIP TCS 2000 has bene ted from the e orts of many people; in particular, the TC1 members and the members of the Steering Committee, the Program Committee, and the Organizing Committee of the conference. Our special thanks go to the Program Committee Co-chairs: Track (1): Jan van Leeuwen (U. Utrecht), Osamu Watanabe (Tokyo Inst. Tech.) Track (2): Masami Hagiya (U. Tokyo), Peter D. Mosses (U. Aarhus).

This volume presents the proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on the Theory and Practice of Software Engineering, TAPSOFT '95, held in Aarhus, Denmark in May 1995. TAPSOFT '95 celebrates the 10th anniversary of this conference series started in Berlin in 1985 to bring together theoretical computer scientists and software engineers (researchers and practitioners) with a view to discussing how formal methods can usefully be applied in software development.
The volume contains seven invited papers, among them one by Vaugham Pratt on the recently revealed bug in the Pentium chip, and 44 revised full papers selected from a total of 147 submissions. In addition the TAPSOFT '95 proceedings contains 10 tool descriptions.