# Questions tagged [programming-languages]

Questions related to design, implementation, and analysis of programming languages. NOT for questions about how to program, which are off-topic on this site.

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### Function notation/mapping for this type of functions?

In short, what is the proper function notation/mapping for this type of functions? From Wikipedia regarding maps: In the communities surrounding programming languages that treat functions as first-...
14 views

### Calling bsearch() in C [closed]

I'm coding a program in Turbo C (yes, I know that's old) and I keep getting an error message. Pieces of the function: ...
27 views

### Is Matlab a programming language?

My question is that, because I'm not sure what a programming really need to become a programming language. So, is Matlab a programming language?
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### What are the most used statements in programming (ranked)?

I was wondering if there are any resources for a study/ranking of the most frequently used statements (by statements I mean assigning, invoking, instantiating etc, like in C#) in programming overall (...
19 views

### Random numbers with condition in matlab

I need ’n’ random numbers that: each one is bigger than ‘a’ their sum is smaller than ‘b’ How can I have that in Matlab?
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### How do you write the sql to get following result?

How do I write sql for the following question to get the following result?
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### Are there any beginner-friendly courses teaching how to create a programming language?

There are many excellent step-by-step courses (free and paid) teaching you how a specific programming language works and how to use it to create applications. I've benefited a lot from these courses. ...
826 views

I have a question about concept of monad used in Haskell programming and category theory in math. Recall in Haskell a monad consists of following components: A type constructor that defines for each ...
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### How should I decode the string?

I am working in an data entry application and it saves the data in a .db file with some sort of encoding. It has columns startdate, enddate, starttime, endtime, f1, f2 upto f15 and each column stores ...
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Hello computer scientists, I am a mathematician. I have taken some undergraduate courses in C++, Python, assembly language, boolean algebra, logic, graph theory, etc. I would like to learn more about ...
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### How does the undecidability of Extensional Martin-Löf Type Theory apply to real type-checking compilers?

It is claimed in many sources (for example, here) that adding a rule like "if Id(X,Y) then X really equals ...
20 views

### How would you model Rust procedural macros?

In Rust programming language one can write a compiler extension function that works on abstract syntax tree, effectively modifying source code before it gets converted into machine instructions. In ...
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### Java programming object terminology

Say there is a class called Person. Then in the following expression : Person human = new Person() Which is the "reference&...
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### doubts on cin and scanf [closed]

i spent literally 5hrs trying to figure out, why the value of n is 1 for my second test case ( which begins at line 12 ) , but i am unable to, could you help me with that? ...
22 views

### Can you use binary files to reverse engineer cpu architecture?

I wanted to know if it was possible to add code directly to a computer without an operating system or any programming language. To do that, I thought that maybe I could use the binary files to reverse ...
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### Type-checking function calls with functional subtyping

I'm relatively new to the topic. Suppose that you want to type-check an expression of the form f(a), i.e. a function call. Assuming that all the declarations are ...
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### How would I convert separate digits to an actual number?

In Dr. Racket, how would I combine the digits w, x, y, z to wxyz (for example 3, 7, 8, 9 to 3,789)? I haven't gotten very far on this: (define digits-to-numbers w x y z)
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### what are the weakest preconditions of these following statements

what is the meaning of postcondition and weakest postcondition in terms of programing and what are weakest postconditons of following statements. ...
24 views

### Regular expressions accepted by programming languages but are not regular [duplicate]

The below definition of Regular Language is given in Wikipedia. In theoretical computer science and formal language theory, a regular language (also called a rational language) is a formal language ...
4k views

### What is the formal, rigorous definition of a programming language?

In programming language theory, people study the theory behind programming languages. But I have never heard any formal definition of programming languages themselves. What is the formal definition, ...
50 views

### Semantics of “write-once” variables for complex data structures

Question My use case for what is described below is not a language or compiler implementation, but finding a reasonable semantics for this feature in a an abstract calculus. Ideally, you give me a ...
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### Are C standard library functions considered part of C programming language

Do we consider functions like printf part of C language even if it's not a keyword in it.
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### First-order mutual-recursive functions Turing-complete or incomplete?

Assume we have a C-like programming language with no pointer/heap semantics (i.e. there is no concept of memory; everything is on the stack). The only datatype supported is Integer, but suppose the ...
43 views

### Terms for different models of sum types

There seem to be at least a couple different possible ways of modeling sum types in a type system, but I haven't been able to find consistent terms for referring to them: A sum type is formed from a ...
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### In the dataflow programming paradigm programs are modeled as directed graphs. Are the edges of the graph variables? And are the vertexes functions?

As I understand it in dataflow programming, programs are structured as directed graphs, an example of which is below Is it true to say that the arrows (or edges) represent the variables within a ...
59 views

### What's the meaning of linguistics?

In the programming language theory world, there are two important terminologies, i.e syntax, and semantics. I can understand these two terminologies: syntax is about sentence's structure (e.g. a valid ...
42 views

### What programming language should I use to run physics simulations of CO2 being absorbed by different materials?

I want to model the absorption of CO2 with multiple different materials such as cement, limestone, wood, etc? I know Matlab is capable of these types of physics simulation according to this research ...
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### How to view Graph Reduction/Graph Representation for a Haskell program?

I know that under the hood, for a Haskell program, the GHC compiler uses graph reduction for optimization. Is there any way to view this graphical representation of the program? I haven't been able to ...
59 views

### What does it take to create a new programming language and its toolchain?

I am super novice to this topic, so my apologies if my question looks completely nonsense to you all! Imagine you want to create a new programing language that transpiles to a more common high/low-...
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### Exceptions from exceptions, does such a thing exist?

I am intrigued: In many languages there are both normal control flow and exceptions. But I never saw "an exception from an exception" or "an exception from an exception from an ...
7k views

### Why do more powerful programming languages tend to have slower implementations?

I was reading this article. The author talks about "The Blub Paradox". He says programming languages vary in power. That makes sense to me. For example, Python is more powerful than C/C++. ...
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### Question regarding definition of recursive function

According to Wikipedia, and also a very common definition of a recursive function found in several books, "functions that call themselves from within their own code". I agree that this solves the ...
856 views

### Where should I start to understand how computers work? [duplicate]

I am interested in how computers work but I have no idea how the concept of 0's and 1's converts to making possible for people to control a computer by programming. I would like to understand from ...
102 views

### Do there exist coding languages where the halting problem is solvable but not trivial

Does there exist a coding language where 1. It is always possible to determine whether a computer program will halt or run forever. And 2. The answer is not always yes. (or always no) So languages ...
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### How to prove that replacing a character in a string in both C and JavaScript is equivalent?

I would like to try some different proofs, specifically in proving equivalence of the implementation of some feature in two different programming languages (C and JS in this question). This is about ...
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### Difference between assignment, binding, and substitution?

I am trying to understand the difference of assignment, binding, and substitution. I know the three things are related, but to me it's not exactly clear what word refers to what. Example, illustration,...
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### How to write a custom editor for a new programming language? [closed]

Let's say I've finished my compiler for my new language. Next step is write a custom editor with syntax highlighting (type checking and semantic can wait), is there a cookbook or any kind of guidance ...
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### Uncurrying and Polymorphism

How do we uncurry functions when they are polymorphic? For example, is it possible to uncurry the following types? If so what is the uncurried type? $\forall X. X \rightarrow int \rightarrow X$ ? \$...
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### Lambda calculus and runtime inspection of the term

This is possibly related to reflection and quoting but I don't want to assume anything beforehand. Here is my requirement. My typed lambda calculus (Curry style) is a simpler variant of Calculus of ...
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### Term for language that abstracts program location?

What is the technical term that describes a programming language that abstracts (or at least largely abstracts) the machine location of programs? I’m thinking here specifically of the evolution of ...
3k views

### Halting problem theory vs. practice

It is often asserted that the halting problem is undecidable. And proving it is indeed trivial. But that only applies to an arbitrary program. Has there been any study regarding classes of programs ...
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### What are symbols and symbol references in Scheme?

Practical Foundation of Programming Languages by Harper distinguishes concept "symbol" and concept "symbol reference" which refers to a symbol: Chapter 31 Symbols In this chapter, we consider ...
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### How is a symbol “given meaning by a family of operations indexed by symbols”?

Practical Foundation of Programming Languages by Harper says: Chapter 31 Symbols A symbol is an atomic datum with no internal structure. Whereas a variable is given meaning by substitution, ...
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### What are the implementation strategies for multiple dispatch: class-based, or method-based organization, or either?

Regarding classes and methods, Practical Foundation of Programming Languages by Harper says: Dynamic dispatch is often described in terms of a particular implementation strategy, which we will ...
66 views

### What is the single type in a dynamic typing language?

Regarding static typing and dynamic typing, Practical Foundation of Programming Languages by Harper says: There have been many attempts by advocates of dynamic typing to distinguish dynamic from ...
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### Do dynamic/static languages associate types or classes to values or variables?

In Practical Foundation of Programming Languages by Harper There have been many attempts by advocates of dynamic typing to distinguish dynamic from static languages. It is useful to consider ...