Bindingsparen

Bindingsparen is a term used in formal semantics and programming language theory to describe a pair that associates a name with a binding value within a given scope. The word binds together the notions of a binding and a pair, reflecting how names are connected to their meanings in a structured context.

In practice, a bindingsparen is a single entry in an environment or symbol table. An entire environment consists of many such pairs, representing all active bindings at a point in evaluation. For example, the pair ('x', 5) denotes that the name x is bound to the value 5. A small environment might contain several bindings, such as {('x', 5), ('y', 3)}.

Bindingsparen play a central role in evaluation, name resolution, and type checking. They support common operations such as lookup (finding the value bound to a name), extension (adding a new binding), and handling shadowing rules (when an inner scope redefines an outer binding). They are often organized as association lists, maps, or nested environments to reflect lexical or dynamic scoping.

Relation to broader concepts: a bindingsparen is a component of an environment or symbol table; it is not by itself the complete structure but a fundamental unit within it. Understanding bindingsparen helps illuminate how compilers and interpreters track variable bindings during program execution and semantic analysis.

See also: environment, symbol table, association list, binding, scope, substitution.