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Operational semantics

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In computer science, operational semantics is one of the approaches to give meaning to computer programs in a mathematically rigorous way (see semantics of programming languages).

An operational semantics for a particular programming language describes how any particular valid program in the language is interpreted as sequences of computational steps. These sequences then are the meaning of the program. In the context of functional programs, the final step in a terminating sequence returns the value of the program. (In general there can be many computation sequences and many return values for a single program, because the program could be nondeterministic.)

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