Counter Machine Reference Model - Reference Library (RefLib)

Reference Library (RefLib)

The "Counter machine reference model" library, or RefLib, is a set of conventions chosen to:

• Specify the "instruction labels";
• Specify the syntax (effective symbol-strings) of these labels;
• Specify the semantics (meaning, content) of the labels and demonstrate equivalences.

Through the RefLib other instruction sets from similar register machine models can be emulated. In a sense the new instructions become "subroutines" of the "base" instructions -- Shepherdson-Sturgis (1963) used this strategy in their demonstration that the three base instructions form a set that is equivalent to the primitive recursive functions. The RefLib may be seen also as a microcoded implementation strategy: the same counter machine is augmented by new instructions from instruction set; it is not a new machine.

The RefLib scripts (instruction implementations) are "near to formal". For a precise demonstration imagine the use of a C preprocessor to expand the RefLib script templates into standard instructions.