An Assessment of Programming Styles: Assignment-Oriented Languages Versus Functional and Applicative Languages¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Broy, Manfred

Affiliations: Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Passau, Postfach 2540, 8390 Passau, F.R.G.

Note: [1] This work was partially supported by the Sonderforschungsbereich 49, Programmiertechnik, München and the ESPRIT Projects Meteor and Prospectra.

Abstract: Three small programming languages are introduced: a procedural one, an applicative one and a functional one (here functional is always meant in the sense of “functional in the style of Backus”). For each of them mathematical (denotational) and operational semantics are defined. Then the similarities and differences between these three languages with respect to mathematical semantics, operational semantics, syntactic and notational properties are discussed in detail. Specific attention is paid to the notion of program variable

DOI: 10.3233/FI-1986-9203

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 169-204, 1986