Programming Language
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A programming language is a machine processable formal language that can be used to create a software program.
- AKA: Computer Programming Language.
- Context:
- It can (typically) have a Programming Language Syntax,
- It can range from being a Low-level Programming Language to being a High-level Programming Language.
- It can range from being a General-Purpose Programming Language to being a Domain-Specific Programming Language.
- It can range from being a Dynamic Programming Language/Interpreted Programming Language to being a Static Programming Language/Compiled Programming Language.
- It can have a set of Primitive Data Types.
- It can range, based on its Data Type System, from being an Untyped Language to being a Typed Language (strongly typed to weakly typed); (statically typed to dynamically typed).
- It can reference a Software Programming Paradigm, such ...
- It can reference a Programming Language Paradigm, such as an Object-Oriented Programming Language or a Functional Programming Language.
- It can facilitate the design of Software.
- ...
- Example(s):
- an Assembly Programming Language.
- an Imperative Programming Language, such as Fortran, Algol, C, or Perl.
- an Object-Oriented Programming Language, such as C++, Java, or C#.
- a Declarative Programming Language, such as SQL.
- a Matrix Programming Language, such as MATLAB Language.
- a Functional Programming Language, such as Haskell.
- a Python Programming Language.
- a Prolog Programming Language.
- a LISP Programming Language.
- a Clojure Programming Language.
- English as a Programming Language.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Procedural Semantic Theory, Abstract Machine.
References
2015
- The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2015 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15/
2013
- (Wikipedia, 2013) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#Syntax
- A programming language's surface form is known as its syntax. Most programming languages are purely textual; they use sequences of text including words, numbers, and punctuation, much like written natural languages. On the other hand, there are some programming languages which are more graphical in nature, using visual relationships between symbols to specify a program.
The syntax of a language describes the possible combinations of symbols that form a syntactically correct program. The meaning given to a combination of symbols is handled by semantics (either formal or hard-coded in a reference implementation). Since most languages are textual, this article discusses textual syntax.
Programming language syntax is usually defined using a combination of regular expressions (for lexical structure) and Backus–Naur Form (for grammatical structure). Below is a simple grammar, based on Lisp:
- A programming language's surface form is known as its syntax. Most programming languages are purely textual; they use sequences of text including words, numbers, and punctuation, much like written natural languages. On the other hand, there are some programming languages which are more graphical in nature, using visual relationships between symbols to specify a program.
expression ::= atom | list
atom ::= number | symbol
number ::= [+-]?['0'-'9']+
symbol ::= ['A'-'Z''a'-'z'].*
list ::= '(' expression* ')'
-
- This grammar specifies the following:
- an expression is either an atom or a list ;
- an atom is either a number or a symbol ;
- a number is an unbroken sequence of one or more decimal digits, optionally preceded by a plus or minus sign;
- a symbol is a letter followed by zero or more of any characters (excluding whitespace); and
- a list is a matched pair of parentheses, with zero or more expressions inside it.
- The following are examples of well-formed token sequences in this grammar: '
12345', '()', '(a b c232 (1))'
- This grammar specifies the following: