SRC Research Report 74

Introduction to LCL, A Larch/C Interface Language

J. V. Guttag and J. J. Horning

This report is aimed primarily at the C programmer who wishes to begin to integrate formal specifications into the program development cycle. We present a specification language targeted specifically at C and discuss how it can be used to support a style of C programming in which abstraction plays a vital role.

The report begins with a quick overview of the use of the Larch family of languages for program specification. It continues with an overview of LCL, a Larch interface language for (ANSI) standard C. It then describes LCL by means of an extended example. Parts of an implementation of the specified interfaces are provided in the body of the report. The remaining parts of the implementation are presented in an appendix. Another appendix contains a brief introduction to the Larch Shared Language.

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