Concepts of Programming Languages

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1 1.1 Reasons for Studying Concepts of Programming Languages 1.2 Programming Domains 1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 1.4 Influe ...

2 Chapter 1 Preliminaries B efore we begin discussing the concepts of programming languages, we must consider a few preliminarie ...

1.1 Reasons for Studying Concepts of Programming Languages 3 words, the study of programming language concepts builds an appreci ...

4 Chapter 1 Preliminaries the time. The index data also show that the distribution of usage of pro- gramming languages is always ...

1.2 Programming Domains 5 early 1960s, because it was more elegant and had much better control state- ments, among other reasons ...

6 Chapter 1 Preliminaries the initial version of which appeared in 1960. It is still the most commonly used language for these a ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 7 safety restrictions. Systems programmers are often excellent programmers who believe they do ...

8 Chapter 1 Preliminaries 1.3.1 Readability One of the most important criteria for judging a programming language is the ease wi ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 9 but that argument is not valid. Readability problems occur whenever the pro- gram’s author ha ...

10 Chapter 1 Preliminaries data types. Suppose a language has four primitive data types (integer, float, double, and character) ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 11 Orthogonality is closely related to simplicity: The more orthogonal the design of a language ...

12 Chapter 1 Preliminaries combined simply with other function calls. This simple elegance is the reason why some language resea ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 13 Form and meaning. Designing statements so that their appearance at least partially indicate ...

14 Chapter 1 Preliminaries efficient, or both, than those that are used. It may even be possible, as noted by Hoare (1973), to u ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 15 with a very small program. More commonly, it means that a language has relatively convenient ...

16 Chapter 1 Preliminaries 1.3.3.2 Exception Handling The ability of a program to intercept run-time errors (as well as other un ...

1.3 Language Evaluation Criteria 17 implement high-level languages were driven by the desire to lower the costs of creating soft ...

18 Chapter 1 Preliminaries Of all the contributors to language costs, three are most important: program development, maintenance ...

1.4 Influences on Language Design 19 Because of the von Neumann architecture, the central features of impera- tive languages are ...