Parametric equations for temporal style assertions

Abstract

Temporal logic provided an appealing approach to specifying properties of operating systems and other "reactive" software by allowing propositions to be qualified by "when" they must be true. This paper shows how to get the same effect, with a finer control over specification and a compositional notion of state, using ordinary working mathematics, without the weight of formal logic, by using sequential functions which are an alternate representation of Moore type state machines.