Comparison of programming languages (basic instructions)

Conventions of this article

Type identifiers

Integer">Integer (computer science)">Integers

• The standard constants int shorts and int lengths can be used to determine how many shorts and longs can be usefully prefixed to short int and long int. The actual sizes of short int, int, and long int are available as the constants short max int, max int, and long max int etc.
• Commonly used for characters.
• The ALGOL 68, C and C++ languages do not specify the exact width of the integer types short, int, long, and long long, so they are implementation-dependent. In C and C++ short, long, and long long types are required to be at least 16, 32, and 64 bits wide, respectively, but can be more. The int type is required to be at least as wide as short and at most as wide as long, and is typically the width of the word size on the processor of the machine. C99 and C++11 also define the intN_t exact-width types in the stdint.h header. See C syntax#Integral types for more information. In addition the types size_t and ptrdiff_t are defined in relation to the address size to hold unsigned and signed integers sufficiently large to handle array indices and the difference between pointers.
• Perl 5 does not have distinct types. Integers, floating point numbers, strings, etc. are all considered "scalars".
• PHP has two arbitrary-precision libraries. The BCMath library just uses strings as datatype. The GMP library uses an internal "resource" type.
• The value of n is provided by the SELECTED_INT_KIND intrinsic function.
• ALGOL 68G's runtime option --precision "number" can set precision for long long ints to the required "number" significant digits. The standard constants long long int width and long long max int can be used to determine actual precision.
• COBOL allows the specification of a required precision and will automatically select an available type capable of representing the specified precision. "PIC S9999", for example, would require a signed variable of four decimal digits precision. If specified as a binary field, this would select a 16-bit signed type on most platforms.
• Smalltalk automatically chooses an appropriate representation for integral numbers. Typically, two representations are present, one for integers fitting the native word size minus any tag bit and one supporting arbitrary sized integers. Arithmetic operations support polymorphic arguments and return the result in the most appropriate compact representation.
• Ada range types are checked for boundary violations at run-time. Run-time boundary violations raise a "constraint error" exception. Ranges are not restricted to powers of two. Commonly predefined Integer subtypes are: Positive and Natural. Short_Short_Integer, Short_Integer and Long_Integer are also commonly predefined, but not required by the Ada standard. Runtime checks can be disabled if performance is more important than integrity checks.
• Ada modulo types implement modulo arithmetic in all operations, i.e. no range violations are possible. Modulos are not restricted to powers of two.
• Commonly used for characters like Java's char.int in PHP has the same width as long type in C has on that system.
• Erlang is dynamically typed. The type identifiers are usually used to specify types of record fields and the argument and return types of [|functions].
• When it exceeds one word.

[Floating point]

• The standard constants real shorts and real lengths can be used to determine how many shorts and longs can be usefully prefixed to short real and long real. The actual sizes of short real, real, and long real are available as the constants short max real, max real and long max real etc. With the constants short small real, small real and long small real available for each type's machine epsilon.
• declarations of single precision often are not honored
• The value of n is provided by the SELECTED_REAL_KIND intrinsic function.
• ALGOL 68G's runtime option --precision "number" can set precision for long long reals to the required "number" significant digits. The standard constants long long real width and long long max real can be used to determine actual precision.
• These IEEE floating-point types will be introduced in the next COBOL standard.
• Same size as double on many implementations.
• Swift supports 80-bit extended precision floating point type, equivalent to long double in C languages.

[Complex number]s

• The value of n is provided by the SELECTED_REAL_KIND intrinsic function.
• Generic type which can be instantiated with any base floating point type.

Other variable types

• specifically, strings of arbitrary length and automatically managed.
• This language represents a boolean as an integer where false is represented as a value of zero and true by a non-zero value.
• All values evaluate to either true or false. Everything in TrueClass evaluates to true and everything in FalseClass evaluates to false.
• This language does not have a separate character type. Characters are represented as strings of length 1.
• Enumerations in this language are algebraic types with only nullary constructors
• The value of n is provided by the SELECTED_INT_KIND intrinsic function.

Derived types

Array">Array data type">Array

• In most expressions, values of array types in C are automatically converted to a pointer of its first argument. See C syntax#Arrays for further details of syntax and pointer operations.
• The C-like type x works in Java, however type x is the preferred form of array declaration.
• Subranges are used to define the bounds of the array.
• JavaScript's array are a special kind of object.
• The DEPENDING ON clause in COBOL does not create a true variable length array and will always allocate the maximum size of the array.

Other types

• Only classes are supported.structs in C++ are actually classes, but have default public visibility and are also POD objects. C++11 extended this further, to make classes act identically to POD objects in many more cases.
• pair only
• Although Perl doesn't have records, because Perl's type system allows different data types to be in an array, "hashes" that don't have a variable index would effectively be the same as records.
• Enumerations in this language are algebraic types with only nullary constructors

Variable and constant declarations

• Pascal has declaration blocks. See functions.
• Types are just regular objects, so you can just assign them.
• In Perl, the "my" keyword scopes the variable into the block.
• Technically, this does not declare name to be a mutable variable—in ML, all names can only be bound once; rather, it declares name to point to a "reference" data structure, which is a simple mutable cell. The data structure can then be read and written to using the ! and := operators, respectively.
• If no initial value is given, an invalid value is automatically assigned. While this behaviour can be suppressed it is recommended in the interest of predictability. If no invalid value can be found for a type, a valid, yet predictable value is chosen instead.
• In Rust, if no initial value is given to a let or let mut variable and it is never assigned to later, there is an . If no value is provided for a const or static or static mut variable, there is an error. There is a error for non-uppercase const variables. After it is defined, a static mut variable can only be assigned to in an unsafe block or function.

[Control flow]

Conditional">Conditional (programming)">Conditional statements

• A single instruction can be written on the same line following the colon. Multiple instructions are grouped together in a block which starts on a newline. The conditional expression syntax does not follow this rule.
• This is pattern matching and is similar to select case but not the same. It is usually used to deconstruct algebraic data types.
• In languages of the Pascal family, the semicolon is not part of the statement. It is a separator between statements, not a terminator.END-IF may be used instead of the period at the end.
• In Rust, the comma at the end of a match arm can be omitted after the last match arm, or after any match arm in which the expression is a block.

Loop statements">Control flow">Loop statements

• "step n" is used to change the loop interval. If "step" is omitted, then the loop interval is 1.
• This implements the universal quantifier as well as the existential quantifier.THRU may be used instead of THROUGH.
• may be used instead of >.
• Type of set expression must implement trait std::iter::IntoIterator.

Exceptions">Exception handling">Exceptions