Abstract
The first programming languages were designed to follow closely the physical design of a computer. The languages that evolved from them, usually called imperative programming languages, are still influenced by the architecture of the computer: they mirror the features of the Von Neumann machine, abstracting from superfluous details and retaining the essential aspects of this architecture.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The language Haskell mentioned in Exercise 6 in Chap. 1 is functional, not imperative. Although the semantics of identifiers in functional languages is very different from the semantics of variables in imperative languages, the concrete syntax is similar.
- 2.
This should not be confused with the use of the keyword “static” as a modifier in the declaration of a variable in a C++ or Java class, where it indicates that the variable is a class variable rather than an instance variable. As their name suggests, instance variables belong to the objects that are instances of the class, so there is a copy of the variable for each object, whereas there is only one copy of a class variable.
- 3.
As a consequence, although it is possible to modify the state of the object passed as parameter using the reference variable, it is not possible to replace it with another object: the latter would require a change in the reference passed as parameter, which is not possible since it was passed by value.
References
Ada Resource Association, Ada 2005 Reference Manual: Language and Standard Libraries, International Standard ISO/IEC 8652:1995(E) with Technical Corrigendum 1 and Amendment 1 (Springer, Berlin, 2005)
M. Sipser, Introduction to the Theory of Computation (Course Technology—Cengage Learning, Stamford, 2006)
J.E. Hopcroft, R. Motwani, J.D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computability (Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2000)
C. Böhm, G. Jacopini, Flow diagrams, Turing machines and languages with only two formation rules. Commun. ACM 9(5), 366–371 (1966)
R. Sebesta, Concepts of Programming Languages, 10th edn (Adison Wesley, Boston, 2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fernández, M. (2014). General Features of Imperative Languages. In: Programming Languages and Operational Semantics. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6368-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6368-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-6367-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-6368-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)