| Programming language lists |
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This is a list of notableprogramming languages, grouped by notable language attribute. As a language can have multiple attributes, the same language can be in multiple groupings.
Agent-oriented programming allows the developer to build, extend and usesoftware agents, which are abstractions of objects that can message other agents.
Array programming (also termedvector ormultidimensional) languages generalize operations on scalars to apply transparently tovectors,matrices, andhigher-dimensional arrays.
Aspect-oriented programming enables developers to add new functionality to code, known as "advice", without modifying that code itself; rather, it uses apointcut to implement the advice into code blocks.
Assembly languages directly correspond to amachine language (seebelow), so machine code instructions appear in a form understandable by humans, although there may not be a one-to-one mapping between an individual statement and an individual instruction. Assembly languages let programmers use symbolic addresses, which theassembler converts to absolute orrelocatable addresses. Most assemblers also supportmacros andsymbolic constants.
Anauthoring language is a programming language designed for use by a non-computer expert to easily create tutorials, websites, and other interactive computer programs.
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Command-line interface (CLI) languages are also called batch languages or job control languages. Examples:
These are languages typically processed bycompilers, though theoretically any language can be compiled or interpreted.
Aconcatenative programming language is apoint-free computerprogramming language in which all expressions denotefunctions, and thejuxtaposition ofexpressions denotesfunction composition.
Message passing languages provide language constructs forconcurrency. The predominant paradigm for concurrency in mainstream languages such asJava isshared memory concurrency. Concurrent languages that make use of message passing have generally been inspired by process calculi such ascommunicating sequential processes (CSP) or theπ-calculus.
Aconstraint programming language is adeclarative programming language where relationships between variables are expressed asconstraints. Execution proceeds by attempting to find values for the variables which satisfy all declared constraints.
Design by contract (or contract programming) is programming using definedpreconditions,postconditions, andinvariants.
Acurly bracket orcurly brace language has syntax that defines a block as the statements betweencurly brackets, a.k.a. braces,{}. This syntax originated withBCPL (1966), and was popularized byC. Many curly bracket languagesdescend from or are strongly influenced by C. Examples:
Dataflow programming languages rely on a (usually visual) representation of the flow of data to specify the program. Frequently used for reacting to discrete events or for processing streams of data. Examples of dataflow languages include:
Data-oriented languages provide powerful ways of searching and manipulating the relations that have been described as entity relationship tables which map one set of things into other sets.[citation needed] Examples of data-oriented languages include:
Decision tables can be used as an aid to clarifying the logic before writing a program in any language, but in the 1960s a number of languages were developed where the main logic is expressed directly in the form of a decision table, including:
Declarative languages express the logic of a computation without describing its control flow in detail.Declarative programming stands in contrast toimperative programming via imperative programming languages, where control flow is specified by serial orders (imperatives). (Pure)functional andlogic-based programming languages are also declarative, and constitute the major subcategories of the declarative category. This section lists additional examples not in those subcategories.
Source embeddable languages embed small pieces of executable code inside a piece of free-form text, often a web page.
Client-side embedded languages are limited by the abilities of the browser or intended client. They aim to provide dynamism to web pages without the need to recontact the server.
Server-side embedded languages are much more flexible, since almost any language can be built into a server. The aim of having fragments of server-side code embedded in a web page is to generate additional markup dynamically; the code itself disappears when the page is served, to be replaced by its output.
The above examples are particularly dedicated to this purpose. A large number of other languages, such asErlang,Scala,Perl,Ring andRuby can be adapted (for instance, by being made intoApache modules).
A wide variety of dynamic or scripting languages can be embedded in compiled executable code. Basically, object code for the language'sinterpreter needs to be linked into the executable. Source code fragments for the embedded language can then be passed to an evaluation function as strings. Application control languages can be implemented this way, if the source code is input by the user. Languages with small interpreters are preferred.
Languages developed primarily for the purpose of teaching and learning of programming.
Anesoteric programming language is a programming language designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as a joke.
Extension programming languages are languages embedded into another program and used to harness its features in extension scripts.
Fourth-generation programming languages arehigh-level programming languages built arounddatabase systems. They are generally used in commercial environments.
Functional programming languages define programs and subroutines as mathematical functions and treat them as first-class. Many so-called functional languages are "impure", containing imperative features. Many functional languages are tied to mathematical calculation tools. Functional languages include:
In electronics, ahardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure, design, and operation of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. The two most widely used and well-supported HDL varieties used in industry areVerilog andVHDL. Hardware description languages include:
Imperative programming languages may be multi-paradigm and appear in other classifications. Here is a list of programming languages that follow theimperative paradigm:
Known asREPL - Interactive mode languages act as a kind of shell: expressions or statements can be entered one at a time, and the result of their evaluation seen immediately.
Interpreted languages are programming languages in which programs may be executed from source code form, by an interpreter. Theoretically, any language can be compiled or interpreted, so the terminterpreted language generally refers to languages that are usually interpreted rather than compiled.
Iterative languages are built around or offeringgenerators.
Garbage Collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector attempts to reclaim memory that was allocated by the program but is no longer used.
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Some programming languages without the inherent ability to manually manage memory, likeCython,[31]Swift,[c] andScala[32] (Scala Native only), are able to import or call functions likemalloc andfree fromC through aforeign function interface.
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List-based languages are a type ofdata-structured language that are based on thelist data structure.
Little languages[35] serve a specialized problem domain.
Logic-based languages specify a set of attributes that a solution must-have, rather than a set of steps to obtain a solution.
Notable languages following thisprogramming paradigm include:
Machine languages are directly executable by a computer's CPU. They are typically formulated as bit patterns, usually represented inoctal orhexadecimal. Each bit pattern causes the circuits in the CPU to execute one of the fundamental operations of the hardware. The activation of specific electrical inputs (e.g., CPU package pins for microprocessors), and logical settings for CPU state values, control the processor's computation. Individual machine languages are specific to a family of processors; machine-language code for one family of processors cannot run directly on processors in another family unless the processors in question have additional hardware to support it (for example, DEC VAX processors included a PDP-11 compatibility mode). They are (essentially) always defined by the CPU developer, not by 3rd parties.[e] The symbolic version, the processor'sassembly language, is also defined by the developer, in most cases. Some commonly used machine codeinstruction sets are:
Macro languages transform one source code file into another. A "macro" is essentially a short piece of text that expands into a longer one (not to be confused withhygienic macros), possibly with parameter substitution. They are often used topreprocess source code. Preprocessors can also supply facilities likefile inclusion.
Macro languages may be restricted to acting on specially labeled code regions (pre-fixed with a# in the case of the C preprocessor). Alternatively, they may not, but in this case it is still often undesirable to (for instance) expand a macro embedded in astring literal, so they still need a rudimentary awareness of syntax. That being the case, they are often still applicable to more than one language. Contrast with source-embeddable languages likePHP, which are fully featured.
Scripting languages such asTcl andECMAScript (ActionScript,ECMAScript for XML,JavaScript,JScript) have been embedded into applications. These are sometimes called "macro languages", although in a somewhat different sense to textual-substitution macros likem4.
Metaprogramming is the writing of programs that write or manipulate other programs, including themselves, as their data or that do part of the work that is otherwise done atrun time duringcompile time. In many cases, this allows programmers to get more done in the same amount of time as they would take to write all the code manually.
Modular programming is a programming paradigm of organising functions and symbols into independent modules.
Multiparadigm languages support more than oneprogramming paradigm. They allow aprogram to use more than oneprogramming style. The goal is to allow programmers to use the best tool for a job, admitting that no one paradigm solves all problems in the easiest or most efficient way.
Several general-purpose programming languages, such asC andPython, are also used for technical computing, this list focuses on languages almost exclusively used for technical computing.
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Class-basedobject-oriented programming languages supportobjects defined by their class. Class definitions include member data.Message passing is a key concept, if not the main concept, in object-oriented languages.
Polymorphic functions parameterized by the class of some of their arguments are typically calledmethods. In languages withsingle dispatch, classes typically also include method definitions. In languages withmultiple dispatch, methods are defined bygeneric functions. There are exceptions wheresingle dispatch methods aregeneric functions (e.g.Bigloo's object system).
Prototype-based languages are object-oriented languages where the distinction between classes and instances has been removed:
Off-side rule languages denote blocks of code by theirindentation.
Procedural programming languages are based on the concept of the unit and scope (the data viewing range) of an executable code statement. A procedural program is composed of one or more units or modules, either user coded or provided in a code library; each module is composed of one or more procedures, also called a function, routine, subroutine, or method, depending on the language. Examples of procedural languages include:
Reflective programming languages let programs examine and possibly modify their high-level structure at runtime or compile-time. This is most common in high-level virtual machine programming languages likeSmalltalk, and less common in lower-level programming languages likeC. Languages and platforms supporting reflection:
Rule-based languages instantiate rules when activated by conditions in a set of data. Of all possible activations, some set is selected and the statements belonging to those rules execute. Rule-based languages include:[citation needed]
Stack-based languages are a type ofdata-structured language that are based on thestack data structure.
Synchronous programming languages are optimized for programming reactive systems, systems that are often interrupted and must respond quickly. Many such systems are also calledrealtime systems, and are used often inembedded systems.
Examples:
Ashading language is a graphics programming language adapted to programming shader effects. Such language forms usually consist of special data types, like "color" and "normal". Due to the variety of target markets for 3D computer graphics.
They provide both higher hardware abstraction and a more flexible programming model than previous paradigms which hardcoded transformation and shading equations. This gives the programmer greater control over the rendering process and delivers richer content at lower overhead.
Shading languages used in offline rendering produce maximum image quality. Processing such shaders is time-consuming. The computational power required can be expensive because of their ability to produce photorealistic results.
These languages assist with generatinglexical analyzers andparsers forcontext-free grammars.
Asystem programming language is for low-level tasks like memory management or task management; it usually refers to a language used forsystems programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches relative to application software.
System software is computer software designed to operate and control computer hardware, and provide a platform to run application software. System software includes software categories such as operating systems, utility software, device drivers, compilers, and linkers. Examples of system languages include:
Transformation languages serve the purpose of transforming (translating) source code specified in a certain formal language into a defined destination format code. It is most commonly used in intermediate components of more complex super-systems in order to adopt internal results for input into a succeeding processing routine.
Visual programming languages let users specify programs in a two-(or more)-dimensional way, instead of as one-dimensional text strings, via graphic layouts of various types. Somedataflow programming languages are also visual languages.
Computer scientistNiklaus Wirth designed and implemented several influential languages.
These are languages based on or that operate onXML.
save andrestore operators. PostScript Level 2 introduced a garbage collector, but its usage is optional.[27]Foundation,AppKit orUIKit); on Linux, the developer needs to importGlibc, anducrt on Windows.[citation needed]
