A format language

  • Authors:
  • A. J. Perlis

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Year:
  • 1964

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Abstract

One of the most primitive parts of a formula language is its specification of input-output actions within the framework of the language. While the specification is intrinsically more complex, say, than the evaluation of an arithmetic expression, most of the difficulties associated with input-output specification arise from the fact that the desired operations have not been properly defined using the framework of a programming language. Indeed, the complexity largely disappears when a programming language is constructed to specify input-output actions. The point to be made here is that the definition of an appropriate programming language makes more rational and simpler all three phases of the input-output programming cycle: (i) source program construction, (ii) object program construction, (iii) object program execution.