The Honeysuckle programming language: an overview

A language for programming systems with communicating process architecture is introduced which builds on the success of occam. The principal innovations are presented, such as a priori deadlock-freedom, a transfer primitive, which conveys object ownership, and an alternation construct. The latter affords direct expression of prioritised reactive (event-driven) behaviour, including exception response. Honeysuckle also offers source-code modularity, object encapsulation, and the recursive definition of both object and process. Despite such ambition, a primary aim has been to retain simplicity in abstraction, expression and implementation.