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Message: [QUOTE="Ben Bacarisse, post: 3056583"] Just to clarify. The meaning is the behaviour, but with the all undetectable variations in behaviour collapsed down into one. The subtle shift in emphasis when one moves from operational semantics (describing behaviour) to denotational semantics (ascribing meaning to program texts) is that one can avoid all the "how" questions. In C (keep this on topic) the standard describes, in operational terms, what happens as a program executes. But then, so as not to constrain implementations has an "as if" rule to allow other behaviour provided that the result is essentially the same -- i.e. (in denotation terms) if the meaning is the same. [/QUOTE]