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occammore about occam

occam

 

  1  definition  found 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  occam 
 
    (Note  lower  case)  A  language  based  on  {Anthony 
  Hoare}'s  {CSP}  and  {EPL}.  Named  after  the  English 
  philosopher,  William  of  Occam  (1300-1349)  who  propounded 
  {Occam's  Razor}.  The  occam  language  was  designed  by  David  May 
  of  {INMOS}  to  easily  describe  {concurrent}  processes  which 
  communicate  via  one-way  channels.  It  was  developed  to  run  on 
  the  {INMOS}  {transputer}  but  compilers  are  available  for 
  {VAX},  {Sun}  and  {Intel}  {MDS},  inter  alia. 
 
  The  basic  entity  in  occam  is  the  process  of  which  there  are 
  four  fundamental  types,  {assignment},  input,  output,  and  wait. 
  More  complex  processes  are  constructed  from  these  using  SEQ  to 
  specify  sequential  execution,  PAR  to  specify  parallel 
  execution  and  ALT  where  each  process  is  associated  with  an 
  input  from  a  channel.  The  process  whose  channel  inputs  first 
  is  executed.  The  fourth  constructor  is  IF  with  a  list  of 
  conditions  and  associated  processes.  The  process  executed  is 
  the  one  with  the  first  true  condition  in  textual  order  There 
  is  no  operator  precedence. 
 
  The  original  occam  is  now  known  as  "occam  1".  It  was  extended 
  to  produce  {occam  2}. 
 
  {Simulator  for  VAX  (ftp://watserv1.waterloo.edu/)}. 
 
  Tahoe  mailing  list:  . 
 
  [David  May  et  al  1982.  "Concurrent  algorithms"]. 
 
  ["Occam",  D.  May  SIGPLAN  Notices  18(4):69-79,  1983]. 
 
  (1994-11-18)




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