Symbolic language (programming)

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In computer science, a symbolic language is a language that uses characters or symbols to represent concepts, such as mathematical operations and the entities (or operands) on which these operations are performed. [1]

Computer science Study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation

Computer science is the study of processes that interact with data and that can be represented as data in the form of programs. It enables the use of algorithms to manipulate, store, and communicate digital information. A computer scientist studies the theory of computation and the practice of designing software systems.

In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language.

Operation (mathematics) Procedure which produces a result from zero or more inputs

In mathematics, an operation is a calculation from zero or more input values to an output value. The number of operands is the arity of the operation. The most commonly studied operations are binary operations, such as addition and multiplication, and unary operations, such as additive inverse and multiplicative inverse. An operation of arity zero, or nullary operation, is a constant. The mixed product is an example of an operation of arity 3, also called ternary operation. Generally, the arity is supposed to be finite. However, infinitary operations are sometimes considered, in which context the "usual" operations of finite arity are called finitary operations.

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Modern programming languages use symbols to represent concepts and/or data and are therefore, examples of symbolic languages. [1]

Some programming languages (such as Lisp and Mathematica) make it easy to represent higher-level abstractions as expressions in the language, enabling symbolic programming. [2] , [3]

Lisp (programming language) Programming language

Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today. Only Fortran is older, by one year. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Clojure, Common Lisp, and Scheme.

Wolfram Mathematica computational software program

Wolfram Mathematica is a modern technical computing system spanning most areas of technical computing — including neural networks, machine learning, image processing, geometry, data science, visualizations, and others. The system is used in many technical, scientific, engineering, mathematical, and computing fields. It was conceived by Stephen Wolfram and is developed by Wolfram Research of Champaign, Illinois. The Wolfram Language is the programming language used in Mathematica.

In software engineering and computer science, abstraction is:

See also

Mathematical notation is a system of symbolic representations of mathematical objects and ideas. Mathematical notations are used in mathematics, the physical sciences, engineering, and economics. Mathematical notations include relatively simple symbolic representations, such as the numbers 0, 1 and 2; function symbols such as sin; operator symbols such as "+"; conceptual symbols such as lim and dy/dx; equations and variables; and complex diagrammatic notations such as Penrose graphical notation and Coxeter–Dynkin diagrams.

In linguistics and semiotics, a notation is a system of graphics or symbols, characters and abbreviated expressions, used in artistic and scientific disciplines to represent technical facts and quantities by convention. Therefore, a notation is a collection of related symbols that are each given an arbitrary meaning, created to facilitate structured communication within a domain knowledge or field of study.

In computing, a programming language specification is a documentation artifact that defines a programming language so that users and implementors can agree on what programs in that language mean. Specifications are typically detailed and formal, and primarily used by implementors, with users referring to them in case of ambiguity; the C++ specification is frequently cited by users, for instance, due to the complexity. Related documentation includes a programming language reference, which is intended expressly for users, and a programming language rationale, which explains why the specification is written as it is; these are typically more informal than a specification.

Related Research Articles

Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (R2004). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived from the ANSI Common Lisp standard.

Hexadecimal numerical system on base 16

In mathematics and computing, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols "0"–"9" to represent values zero to nine, and "A"–"F" to represent values ten to fifteen.

Pseudocode is an informal high-level description of the operating principle of a computer program or other algorithm.

Polish notation (PN), also known as normal Polish notation (NPN), Łukasiewicz notation, Warsaw notation, Polish prefix notation or simply prefix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators precede their operands, in contrast to the more common infix notation, in which operators are placed between operands, as well as reverse Polish notation (RPN), in which operators follow their operands. It does not need any parentheses as long as each operator has a fixed number of operands. The description "Polish" refers to the nationality of logician Jan Łukasiewicz, who invented Polish notation in 1924.

S-expression data serialization format

In computing, s-expressions, sexprs or sexps are a notation for nested list (tree-structured) data, invented for and popularized by the programming language Lisp, which uses them for source code as well as data. In the usual parenthesized syntax of Lisp, an s-expression is classically defined as

  1. an atom, or
  2. an expression of the form (x. y) where x and y are s-expressions.

Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms.

In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which procedures to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression.

The plus and minus signs are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative as well as the operations of addition and subtraction. Their use has been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous. Plus and minus are Latin terms meaning "more" and "less", respectively.

In computer programming, M-expressions were an early proposed syntax for the Lisp programming language, inspired by contemporary languages such as Fortran and ALGOL.

In computer science, primitive data type is either of the following:

In computer programming, an assignment statement sets and/or re-sets the value stored in the storage location(s) denoted by a variable name; in other words, it copies a value into the variable. In most imperative programming languages, the assignment statement is a fundamental construct.

In computer science, a relational operator is a programming language construct or operator that tests or defines some kind of relation between two entities. These include numerical equality and inequalities.

Fortress is a discontinued experimental programming language for high-performance computing, created by Sun Microsystems with funding from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems project. One of the language designers was Guy L. Steele Jr., whose previous work includes Scheme, Common Lisp, and Java.

XL is the first and so far the only computer programming language designed to support concept programming.

In computer programming, homoiconicity is a property of some programming languages. A language is homoiconic if a program written in it can be manipulated as data using the language, and thus the program's internal representation can be inferred just by reading the program itself. For example, a Lisp program is written as a regular Lisp list, and can be manipulated by other Lisp code. In homoiconic languages, all code can be accessed and transformed as data, using the same representation. This property is often summarized by saying that the language treats "code as data".

In mathematics, a symbolic language is a language that uses characters or symbols to represent concepts, such as mathematical operations, expressions, and statements, and the entities or operands on which the operations are performed.

In engineering, a symbolic language is a language that uses standard symbols, marks, and abbreviations to represent concepts such as entities, aspects, attributes, and relationships.

References

  1. 1 2 "symbolic language Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia". www.pcmag.com. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  2. "Bret Victor, beast of burden". worrydream.com. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  3. "Symbolic Programming Visualized—Wolfram Blog" . Retrieved 2019-03-23.
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