Principles of
Programming Language
Amit Dua
BITS Pilani Computer Science and Information Systems Department
BITS, Pilani
Pilani Campus
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BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus
Introductory lecture on PPL
Lecture 1
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Why should we study Principles of
Programming Language?
Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Course Motivation
• Reasons for studying concepts of programming
languages
• Increased capacity to express idea.
• Improved background for choosing appropriate languages.
• Increased ability to learn new language.
• Better understanding of the significance of implementation.
• Overall advancement of computing.
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Programming Domains
• Scientific Applications
• Floating point arithmetic, Arrays and Matrices, loops and selection
• FORTRAN, ALGOL 60
• Business Applications
• Reports, Decimal numbers and Character data, Decimal arithmetic
• COBOl
• Artificial Intelligence
• Symbolic Computation mainly with names
• Linked list
• LISP, Prolog
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Programming Domains
Contd..
• System Programming
• Deals with low level features
• UNIX
• Scripting Languages
• Initially began with collection of commands in a file and then followed by control statements ,
functions etc.
• Java Script, PHP
• Special Purpose Languages
• Produce business reports, Instruct programmable Machine tools, System Simulation
• From AI to robotics to computer networks to autonomous vehicles,
programming domains is all pervasive
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What are we going to study in this
course?
Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
PPL as a Course
• What is not
– Do not teach you a programming language
– Do not teach you how to program
• What is
– Introduce fundamental concepts of programming languages
– Discuss design issues of various language constructs
– Examine design/implementation choices for these constructs
– Compare design alternatives
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Books
Text Book: Ravi Sethi, "Programming Languages:
Concepts and Constructs" 2nd Edition by Addison
Wesley.
[R1].Robert W. Sebesta, "Concepts of Programming
Languages", 10th Edition by Pearson Publishers.
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What is the architecture of computer on
which we are programming?
Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Von Neumann Architecture
• Stored program concept
• Data and instruction have same format
• Interpret sequences as data and instructions
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The von Neumann
Architecture
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Imperative Lang. & von
Neumann Architecture
• Imperative languages, most dominant, because of von
Neumann computers
• Data and programs stored in memory
• Memory is separate from CPU
• Instructions and data are piped from memory to CPU
• Basis for imperative languages
• Variables model memory cells
• Assignment statements model piping
• Iteration is efficient
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The von Neumann Architecture
• Fetch-execute-cycle (on a von Neumann architecture
computer)
initialize the program counter
repeat forever
fetch the instruction pointed by the counter
increment the counter
decode the instruction
execute the instruction
end repeat
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What makes a good Programming
language?
Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Language evaluation criteria
Language evaluation criteria:
Readability: the ease with which programs can be read
and understood
Writability: the ease with which a language can be used to
create programs
Reliability: a program performs to its specifications under
all conditions
Cost
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Features Related to Readability
Overall simplicity: language is more readable if
– Fewer features and basic constructs
Readability problems occur whenever program’s author uses a subset different
from that familiar to reader
– Fewer feature multiplicity (i.e., doing the same operation with different ways)
– Minimal operator overloading
Orthogonality
– A relatively small set of primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small
number of ways
– The combination is legal.
– Too much orthogonality can also cause problems
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Features Related to Readability
Control statements
– Sufficient control statements for structured prog.
can read program from top to bottom w/o jump
Data types and structures
– Adequate facilities for defining data type & structure
Syntax considerations
– Identifier or keywords
– Special words and methods of forming compound statements
– Form and meaning: self-descriptive constructs, meaningful keywords
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Writability
Simplicity and orthogonality
– But, too orthogonal may cause errors undetected
Support for abstraction
– Ability to define and use complex structures or operations in ways that allow
details to be ignored
– Abstraction in process (e.g. subprogram), data
Expressivity
– A set of relatively convenient ways of specifying operations
– Example: the inclusion of for statement in many modern languages
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Reliability
Type checking
– Testing for type errors, e.g. subprogram parameters
Exception handling
– Intercept run-time errors & take corrective measures
Aliasing
– Presence of two or more distinct references for the same memory location
Readability and writability
– A language that does not support “natural” ways of expressing an algorithm will
necessarily use “unnatural” approaches, and hence reduced reliability
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Cost
• Training programmers to use language
• Writing programs (closeness to particular applications)
• Compiling programs
• Executing programs: run-time type checking
• Language implementation system: availability of free
compilers
• Reliability: poor reliability leads to high costs
• Maintaining programs
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Language Evaluation Criteria
CRITERIA
Characteristic READABILITY WRITABILITY RELIABILITY
Simplicity X X X
Orthogonality X X X
Data types X X X
Syntax design X X X
Support for abstraction X X
Expressivity X X
Type checking X
Exception handling X
Restricted aliasing X
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Language Design Trade-Offs
Reliability vs. cost of execution
– e.g., Java demands all references to array elements be checked for proper
indexing but that leads to increased execution costs
Readability vs. writability
– e.g., use of many powerful operators (and a large number of new symbols),
allowing complex computations to be written in a compact program but at the
cost of poor readability
Writability (flexibility) vs. reliability
– e.g., C++ pointers are powerful and very flexible but not reliably used
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Questions
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Discussion
• Evaluate and discuss the Assembly language
• Evaluate C language and MATLAB for the following
application
1) Matrix operations
2) System programming
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Language Implementation
Compiler - source code translation into machine code (all at
once)
Interpreter - machine is brought up to the language (one
statement at a time)
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Implementation Methods
• Compilation
• Programs are translated into machine language.
• Pure Interpretation
• Programs are interpreted by another program known
as an interpreter.
• Hybrid Implementation Systems
• A compromise between compilers and pure
interpreters.
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Layered View of Computer
The operating system and
Language implementation
are layered over machine
interface of a computer
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The Compilation
Process
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Compilation
• Translate high-level program (source language) into
machine code (machine language).
• Compilation process has several phases:
• lexical analysis: converts characters in the source program into lexical units e.g.:
identifiers / keywords, operators, punctuation…
• syntax analysis: transforms lexical units into parse trees which represent the
syntactic structure of program.
• Intermediate code generation & Semantics analysis: generate intermediate code
and does type checking.
• Code optimization: (optional)
• code generation: machine code is generated.
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Additional Compilation
Terminologies
• Load module (executable image):
• the user and system code together.
• Linking and loading:
• the process of collecting system program units and
linking them to a user program.
• As well as linking other user programs to it.
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Compiled C
Source Linker
compiler .o
code and
files
in C loader
Machine
code (exe)
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Pure Interpretation
• No translation
Program interpreted by another program (interpreter) without translation
– Interpreter acts a simulator or virtual machine
– Machine is brought to the level of language by building higher level machine
called an interpreter that can run the language directly.
• Easier implementation of programs (run-time errors can easily and immediately be
displayed)
• Slower execution (10 to 100 times slower than compiled programs)
Decoding of higher level language programs is more complex, decoding has to be
done every time a statement is executed.
• Often requires more space
• Used in APL, SNOBOL, LISP.
• Now rare for traditional high-level languages
• Significant comeback with some Web scripting languages (e.g., JavaScript, PHP)
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Pure Interpretation Process
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Comparisons
• Interpretation is slower as decoding of higher level language programs is
more complex, decoding has to be done every time a statement is executed.
• Compiled languages have bias towards static properties since all compiling
decisions are made at translation time. Interpreted languages can deal with
dynamic properties.
• Interpretation is more flexible: due to direct running on the source code,
interpreter can allow to add features or correct errors in the source code.
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Hybrid Implementation Systems
• A compromise between compilers and pure interpreters.
• A high-level language program is translated to an
intermediate language that allows easy interpretation.
• Faster than pure interpretation since the source language
statements are decoded only once.
• Examples
• Perl programs are partially compiled to detect errors before interpretation.
• Initial implementations of Java were hybrid;
• the intermediate form, byte code, provides portability to any machine that has a
byte code interpreter and a run-time system (together, these are called Java Virtual
Machine).
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Hybrid
Implementation
Process
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Just-in-Time Implementation
Systems
• Initially translate programs to an intermediate language.
• Then compile the intermediate language of the subprograms
into machine code when they are called Machine code
version is kept for subsequent calls.
• JIT systems are widely used for Java programs.
• .NET languages are implemented with a JIT system.
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Summary
• The study of programming languages is valuable for a number of reasons:
• Increase our capacity to use different constructs
• Enable us to choose languages more intelligently
• Makes learning new languages easier
• Most important criteria for evaluating programming languages include:
• Readability, writability, reliability, cost
• Major influences on language design have been
• machine architecture and software development methodologies
• The major methods of implementing programming languages are:
• compilation, pure interpretation, and hybrid implementation
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Questions
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