Programming language assessments using the program profiles

Abstract

There is a number of comparisons of various programming languages, but there is only a limited number of comparisons based on the quantitative assessement (Perrit, Dhillon, 81). This paper provides the comparison of some Algol 68 features with similar features in other languages e.g. Pascal and Ada. The comparison is based upon the statistics (profiles) of Algol 68 programs. Terms used in this paper come rather from general programming languages background than from particular Algol 68 terms. Special features and necessary Algol 68 terms are explained in the text. The most significant results: 25 per cent of IFs are conditional expressions, constant declarations are more frequent than variable declarations.