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days-after-J2000.0
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 88 13:33:24 EDT
From: John D. Ramsdell <ramsdell%linus@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
>How do the denotational semantics people handle calendar time, since
>we all know that anything they do is obviously the right decision in
>language design?
The same way you handle I/O (e.g. files and network connections), I
presume. I have seen descriptions that pass around a file system as
well as a store, but since they never seem to part company, I don't
really see the point; and anyhow, that doesn't address the nondeterminism
of external agents. Are we supposed to put quantum mechanics in our
model?
I don't think it's worth worrying about at the moment; how could any
real-life harm result from just imagining that the time and file system
are in the store, and making it an imaginary side effect to read the
time? I can't conceive of how this could be consequential, and I'd love
to know if anyone does any reasoning using a formal specification that
could get screwed up by this.