PlusCal
Formal specification language created by Leslie Lamport
PlusCal (formerly called +CAL) is a formal specification language created by Leslie Lamport, which transpiles to TLA+. In contrast to TLA+'s action-oriented focus on distributed systems, PlusCal most resembles an imperative programming language and is better-suited when specifying sequential algorithms.[1] PlusCal was designed to replace pseudocode, retaining its simplicity while providing a formally-defined and verifiable language.[2] A one-bit clock is written in PlusCal as follows:
<syntaxhighlight lang="text"> -- fair algorithm OneBitClock {
variable clock \in {0, 1};
{
while (TRUE) {
if (clock = 0)
clock := 1
else
clock := 0
}
}
} </syntaxhighlight>
See also
References
- ^
Lamport, Leslie (28 February 2015). Principles and Specifications of Concurrent Systems. p. 7. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
PlusCal is more convenient than TLA+ for describing the flow of control in an algorithm. This generally makes it better for specifying sequential algorithms and shared-memory multiprocess algorithms.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (2 January 2009). "The PlusCal Algorithm Language" (PDF). Theoretical Aspects of Computing - ICTAC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5684. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 36–60. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-03466-4_2. ISBN 978-3-642-03465-7. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
External links
- PlusCal tools and documentation are found on the PlusCal Algorithm Language page.
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