Chapter 4
Representing Distributed Algorithms
Syntax and Semantics
4.1 Introduction
This chapter introduces a minimal set of notations to represent distributed algorithms. These notations do not always conform to the syntax of popular programming languages like C or Java. They are only useful to appropriately specify certain key issues of atomicity, nondeterminism, and scheduling in a succinct way. The notations have enough flexibility to accommodate occasional use of even word specifications for representing actions. These specifications are only meant for a human user who is trying to implement the system or reason about its correctness. In [D76], Dijkstra argued about the importance of such a language to influence our thinking habits. This ...
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