Formal specifications and supporting tools are effective at improving the quality and correctness of a software system. A language is usually simple once understood, but communicating this understanding to another person can be difficult, perhaps because a new language often represents a new paradigm. This communication is particularly important when developing a new language; the compiler and other tools are still under development, so learning by doing isn't always possible, and yet to

more »

... ly implement the compiler, a solid understanding of the language is necessary. We use Z notation to formally specify part of Pit, which is a general-purpose programming language that we are currently developing. The main idea behind Pit is to create a language where the programmer can choose between allocating memory manually by using statically-typed