Acsc373 – Compiler Writing Chapter 3 – a survey of High-level Languages

• 
  Imperative Languages
  

PASCAL, Concurrent Pascal, Modula-2, Ada

BCPL and C, C++

• 
  Functional Languages – LISP, APL
  
• 
  Logic Programming Languages – PROLOG
  
• 
  Other Language Types – Object-oriented languages
  

Smalltalk

SLOBOL
Software packages

Interface languages – fourth-generation languages

One, two and three are associated with machine code, assembly languages and conventional high-level languages.

And thus, bridge the gap between the writing of programs in a high-level language and their execution on a machine.

However, in order to bridge this gap we have to define both the source (high-level) and target (low-level) languages, and understand enough about the target language to be able to express high-level notions in them.


Exercises

1. 
   Compare the different high-level languages and distinguish between imperative, functional, logic programming languages and other language types.
   
2. 
   What are the relative merits in having a database package controlled by
   
   1. 
      function and procedure calls from a conventional high-level programming languages,
      
   2. 
      A special-purpose programming/command language, or
      
   3. 
      A menu-driven system?
      

There are a number of reasons. There is the reason of the intellectual bridge between high-level and low-level languages, which should remove some of the mystery between high-level solutions to problems and their implementation on relatively simple hardware. There are also a number of other reasons.

i.e. proper definitions are essential where automated processing is involved.

grammars (easier to input to a computer, and tools have been developed to process grammars to produce compilers)