occam

language (Note lower case) A language based on AnthonyHoare's CSP and EPL. Named after the English

philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) who propounded

Occam's Razor. The occam language was designed by David May

of INMOS to easily describe concurrent processes which

communicate via one-way channels. It was developed to run on

the INMOS transputer but compilers are available for

VAX, Sun and Intel MDS, inter alia.

The basic entity in occam is the process of which there are

four fundamental types, assignment, input, output, and wait.

More complex processes are constructed from these using SEQ to

specify sequential execution, PAR to specify parallel

execution and ALT where each process is associated with an

input from a channel. The process whose channel inputs first

is executed. The fourth constructor is IF with a list of

conditions and associated processes. The process executed is

the one with the first true condition in textual order. There

is no operator precedence.

The original occam is now known as "occam 1". It was extended

to produce occam 2.

Simulator for VAX .

Tahoe mailing list: [email protected].

[David May et al, 1982. "Concurrent algorithms"].

["Occam", D. May, SIGPLAN Notices 18(4):69-79, 1983].

(1994-11-18)