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.

Read more about this topic:  PLANC

Famous quotes containing the words basic and/or structure:

    “The gay world that flourished in the half-century between 1890 and the beginning of the Second World War, a highly visible, remarkably complex, and continually changing gay male world, took shape in New York City.... It is not supposed to have existed.”
    —George Chauncey, U.S. educator, author. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, p. 1, Basic Books (1994)

    “... the structure of a page of good prose is, analyzed logically, not something frozen but the vibrating of a bridge, which changes with every step one takes on it.”
    —Robert Musil (1880–1942)