Concepts of Programming Languages

Now available in a new edition, this bestselling book critiques the major programming languages of the past 40 years, and it teaches readers to critically evaluate different languages and their constructs and choose the one most appropriate for a given application.

This third, significantly revised edition of the best-selling Concepts of Programming Languages includes new coverage of C++, Ada 95, and many other recent developments in the field of programming languages. The conceptual approach that defined the popular first and second editions remains intact. Author Robert Sebesta, University of Colorado, describes fundamental concepts of programming languages by defining the design issues of the various language constructs, examining the design choices for these constructs in some of the most common languages, and critically comparing the design alternatives. He discusses in detail the most effective and widely used methods of syntax description and introduces the most common methods for describing the semantics of programming languages. Discussions of implementation methods and issues are integrated throughout the book. Highlights of the new edition Presents new material on C++, including templated functions, templated classes, exception handling, and reference types. Covers and compares the object-oriented programming features of C++ and Ada 95. Contains sections on the new concurrency features of Ada 95, the parallel programming capabilities of High Performance FORTRAN, and the most interesting aspects of the functional programming languages ML and Miranda. Uses C, C++, or Ada in some code examples that were formerly written in Pascal or Modula-2. Describes Scheme, rather than pure LISP, as the primary language in the discussion of functional programming. Employs operational semantics instead of flowcharts to describe control structures.