PLANC - PLANC Basic Structure

PLANC Basic Structure

PLANC programs are structured into modules and routines.

A very simple example of a PLANC program is as follows:

MODULE mod INTEGER ARRAY : stack (0:100) PROGRAM : mprog INTEGER : i, j,k, m INISTACK stack 1 =: i 2 =: j i+j =: k =: m ENDROUTINE ENDMODULE

A difference from popular programming languages is that the assignment operator goes from left to right: First you compute the value, then you store it. Compile-time initialization of variables, on the other hand, went from right to left.

The assignment operator returns the stored value, so you could store it multiple times: 5 =: a =: b would store 5 into both the A and B variables. It shares this direction with Plankalkül, early ALGOL drafts, and Mary, another little known programming language developed in Norway, but also the popular C programming language.

A related distinct syntactic feature is that a function can be defined to take as input the computed value of the expression on its left side. Also, a single additional argument does not require surrounding parentheses. The resulting infix notation blurs the syntactical difference between functions and operators. Such expressions seem conceptually as having a computed value flowing from left to the right.

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