From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "J-P. Rosen" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Languages don't matter. A mathematical refutation Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 18:17:58 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <87h9t95cly.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <04f0759d-0377-4408-a141-6ad178f055ed@googlegroups.com> <871tk1z62n.fsf@theworld.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 16:17:03 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="23dab0694e4174fdc880833ec67fa650"; logging-data="7473"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18DOGP8iqtdWKWOl/2cZsci" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.5.0 In-Reply-To: <871tk1z62n.fsf@theworld.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:ts20VhHsCc4Azuj+3H9RF9x6HjQ= Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:25398 Date: 2015-04-03T18:17:58+02:00 List-Id: Le 03/04/2015 15:37, Bob Duff a écrit : > Assembly language: Semantics are defined in terms of the generated > machine code. OK > High-level language: Semantics are defined in terms of what the program > does. I don't understand this. Do you mean "specification: observed behaviour of a program" ? ;-) > > Those are how I understand the terms, and I think how they are commonly > understood. I can't think of any other useful definitions. > C is clearly a high-level language, by those definitions. Not clearly. A number of things (handling of integer overflows, semantics of %, dereferencing the null pointer...) are defined in the language as "like the machine does" (this is spelled: implementation defined). Unless it has changed in recent versions of C ? -- J-P. Rosen Adalog 2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00 http://www.adalog.fr