Main Properties of Program Schemas

In this chapter we introduce a basic programming language by defining its syntax and semantics. The syntax is defined as a set of program schemas constructed with a given set of program constructs by using the terms and the open formulas of a fixed alphabet (similarity type). This ensures that the function and relation symbols from which the terms and formulas are built up are included in the program schemas . We take the traditional view of a programming language as syntactic: in this case the syntax is the set of program schemas of the given similarity type.