Publisher's Synopsis
The aim of this book is to increase the use of partial algebras, especially in computer science. It sets out to achieve this by presenting examples of increasing complexity of algebraic specifications using essentially partial operations, and by proving that structural induction alone yields on equationally partial algebras a complete calculus of abstract programs on parametrized abstract data types. It develops a special kind of partiality - the equational partiality - both as a sound formal basis for algebraic specifications with partial operations, and as a proper generalization of universal algebra from total algebras to partial ones. The book extends the modeltheoretic initial semantics of abstract data types with partial operations to behavioural semantics.;Postgraduate and third year mathematicians (algebraists particularly) and computer scientists (courses on 'Formal Models in Programming').
