Composite data typeIn computer science, a composite data type or compound data type is any data type which can be constructed in a program using the programming language's primitive data types and other composite types. It is sometimes called a structure or aggregate type, although the latter term may also refer to arrays, lists, etc. The act of constructing a composite type is known as composition. Composite data types are often contrasted with scalar variables. A struct is C's and C++'s notion of a composite type, a datatype that composes a fixed set of labeled fields or members.
Pointer (computer programming)In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer references a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as dereferencing the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page.
Aliasing (computing)In computing, aliasing describes a situation in which a data location in memory can be accessed through different symbolic names in the program. Thus, modifying the data through one name implicitly modifies the values associated with all aliased names, which may not be expected by the programmer. As a result, aliasing makes it particularly difficult to understand, analyze and optimize programs. Aliasing analysers intend to make and compute useful information for understanding aliasing in programs.
Linked listIn computer science, a linked list is a linear collection of data elements whose order is not given by their physical placement in memory. Instead, each element points to the next. It is a data structure consisting of a collection of nodes which together represent a sequence. In its most basic form, each node contains data, and a reference (in other words, a link) to the next node in the sequence. This structure allows for efficient insertion or removal of elements from any position in the sequence during iteration.
Reference (computer science)In computer programming, a reference is a value that enables a program to indirectly access a particular data, such as a variable's value or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the datum, and accessing the datum is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from the datum itself. A reference is an abstract data type and may be implemented in many ways. Typically, a reference refers to data stored in memory on a given system, and its internal value is the memory address of the data, i.
Seed7Seed7 is an extensible general-purpose programming language designed by Thomas Mertes. It is syntactically similar to Pascal and Ada. Along with many other features, it provides an extension mechanism. Seed7 supports introducing new syntax elements and their semantics into the language, and allows new language constructs to be defined and written in Seed7. For example, programmers can introduce syntax and semantics of new statements and user defined operator symbols.
String literalA string literal or anonymous string is a literal for a string value in the source code of a computer program. Modern programming languages commonly use a quoted sequence of characters, formally "bracketed delimiters", as in x = "foo", where "foo" is a string literal with value foo. Methods such as escape sequences can be used to avoid the problem of delimiter collision (issues with brackets) and allow the delimiters to be embedded in a string. There are many alternate notations for specifying string literals especially in complicated cases.
System programming languageA system programming language is a programming language used for system programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches when compared with application software. Edsger Dijkstra refers to these languages as machine oriented high order languages, or mohol. General-purpose programming languages tend to focus on generic features to allow programs written in the language to use the same code on different platforms.
Comparison of numerical-analysis softwareThe following tables provide a comparison of numerical analysis software. The operating systems the software can run on natively (without emulation). Colors indicate features available as The operating systems the software can run on natively (without emulation).
AWKAWK (awk Q:k) is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The AWK language is a data-driven scripting language consisting of a set of actions to be taken against streams of textual data – either run directly on files or used as part of a pipeline – for purposes of extracting or transforming text, such as producing formatted reports.
Record (computer science)In computer science, a record (also called a structure, struct, or compound data) is a basic data structure. Records in a database or spreadsheet are usually called "rows". A record is a collection of fields, possibly of different data types, typically in a fixed number and sequence. The fields of a record may also be called members, particularly in object-oriented programming; fields may also be called elements, though this risks confusion with the elements of a collection.
