... computer programs. All
programming languages are formal languages.
natural language: Any of the languages people speak that have evolved nat-
urally.
portability: A property of a program that can run ... are declarations, assignments, and print state-
ments.
declaration: A statement that creates a new variable and determines its type.
assignment: A statement that assigns a value to a variable.
expression: ... important here: the name of the variable we pass as an
argument (argument) has nothing to do with the name of the parameter (phil).
Let me say that again:
The name of the variable we pass as an argument...
... evolved naturally.
Formal languages are languages that are designed by people for specific applications. For
example, the notation that mathematicians use is a formal language that is particularly
good ... Formal and natural languages 5
1.4 Formal and natural languages
Natural languages are the languages people speak, such as English, Spanish, and French.
They were not designed by people (although ... draw a stack
diagram. Like state diagrams, stack diagrams show the value of each variable, but they
also show the function each variable belongs to.
Each function is represented by a frame. A...
... than
what the programmer intended.
semantics: The meaning of a program.
natural language: Any one of the languages that people speak that evolved
naturally.
formal language: Any one of the languages ... the syntactic structure of a program, analo-
gous to a word in a natural language.
parse: To examine a program and analyze the syntactic s tructure.
print statement: An instruction that causes ... is a
small disadvantage of high-level languages.
But the advantages are enormous. First, it is much easier to program in a high-
level language. Programs written in a high-level language take...
... pur-
poses, like representing mathematical ideas or computer programs. All
programming languages are formal languages.
natural language: Any of the languages people speak that have evolved nat-
urally.
interpret: ... evolved naturally.
Formal languages are languages that are designed by people for specific
applications. For example, the notation that mathematicians use is a formal
language that is particularly ... powerful features of a programming language is the ability to
manipulate variables. A variable is a named lo c ation that stores a value.
Just as there are different types of values (integer, character,...