Chapter Goals

Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Programming Language

Expressions and Statements

MESSI NGUELE Thomas (PhD)

Yaoundé, 02nd 2024

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 1 / 17
 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Chapter Goals

1 Define an expression, a statement.

2 Give a difference between an expression and a statement.
3 Give the main types of expressions encountered in programming languages.
4 Give the main types of statements encountered in programming languages

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 2 / 17
 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Agenda

1 Chapter Goals

2 Expressions

3 Statements

4 Exercises

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 3 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities on Expressions
Expressions Tree structure
Statements Boolean expressions
Exercises Mixed - Mode expressions

Agenda

1 Chapter Goals

2 Expressions
Generalities on Expressions
Tree structure
Boolean expressions
Mixed - Mode expressions

3 Statements

4 Exercises

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 4 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities on Expressions
Expressions Tree structure
Statements Boolean expressions
Exercises Mixed - Mode expressions

Generalities on Expressions
1 An expression is a combinaison of one or more constants, variables,
operators and functions intended to be computed in order to produce a value.
2 In others words, an expression is composed of one or more operands whose
values may be combined by operators.
3 Example is "4.0 + a ∗ b" which evaluation is as follow :
First substitute values for variables a and b.
Multiply these values.
Add 4.0 to the previous result.
4 There are precedence rules in order to avoid non determinism. For example,
in java, the evaluation is as follow :
a - Evaluate any expression enclosed within brackets first, starting with the
innermost brackets.
b - Apply the following operator precedence :
! * / % + - > < >= <= == != && || =
c - If the opperators in (b-) have the same precedence, apply them in order from
left to right.

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 5 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities on Expressions
Expressions Tree structure
Statements Boolean expressions
Exercises Mixed - Mode expressions

Evaluation of "a + b ∗ c/d"

1 The values of b and c are first multiplied together, the result is then divided
by d and finaly added to a value.
2 The evaluation of an expression should produce a value and nothing more ; it
should not change the state of a program.
3 Operators in expressions can be binary (dyadic) or unary (monadic).

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 Chapter Goals Generalities on Expressions
Expressions Tree structure
Statements Boolean expressions
Exercises Mixed - Mode expressions

Boolean expressions

1 The value returned must be either true or false

2 Often involve relational operators (>,<=,==)
3 Can also contain variables of types boolean and boolean operators (not, and,
or in Pascal ; !, && and || in Java, C C++)
4 In Pascal * (respec. +) has the same precedence as and (respec. or)
5 Are often used in if and while statements.
Example : if(i<0) or (a[i]>a[i+1]) then ...
This lead to what called short-circuit evaluation.
Given (a and b) where a is false, b is not evaluated.
Given (a or b) where a is true, b is not evaluated.

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 7 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities on Expressions
Expressions Tree structure
Statements Boolean expressions
Exercises Mixed - Mode expressions

Mixed - Mode expressions

1 An expression in which the two operands do not have the same type is called
a mixed-mode expression.
2 Three categories of languages can be identified :
Languages that forbit mixed-mode expressions (Ada).
Languages like Pascal and Java that allow ’sensible’ combinations such as
adding an intenger to floating-point value. The result of such an expression is,
as would be expected, a floating-point value.
Languages like C and C++ that allow ’unusual’ combinations such as the
ability to add an integer to a character. This can lead to unexpected results.

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 8 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities
Expressions Assignment Statements
Statements Compound Statements
Exercises Other statements

Agenda

1 Chapter Goals

2 Expressions

3 Statements
Generalities
Assignment Statements
Compound Statements
Other statements

4 Exercises

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 9 / 17
 Chapter Goals Generalities
Expressions Assignment Statements
Statements Compound Statements
Exercises Other statements

Generalities

1 A statement is a syntactic unit (of an imperative programming language)

that expresses some action to be carried out.
2 Statements are the commands in a language which perform actions and
change the state.
3 Typical statements are :
Assignment variables which change the values of variables.
Conditional statements which have alternative courses of actions.
Iterative statements which loop through a series of statements until some
condition is satisfied.
Procedure and method calls.

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 Chapter Goals Generalities
Expressions Assignment Statements
Statements Compound Statements
Exercises Other statements

Assignment Statements
1 The general form of the assignment is "el :=er".
el is the expression on the left-hand side of an assignement that gives a
reference as its results.
er is the expression on the right-hand side of an assignment that gives a value
as its result.
2 The value of the right-hand expression is assigned to the reference given by
the left-hand expression.
3 Assignment is an operation on reference-value pairs.
4 There are restriction on el :
It should be variable name, field of a record.
Compatibility between the type of el and the type of value given by er.

Assignment Operators
=, +=, -=, *=, /=, ++, –
*b++ ?, a = 1, Is there any difference between b=a++ and b=++a ?
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 Chapter Goals Generalities
Expressions Assignment Statements
Statements Compound Statements
Exercises Other statements

Compound Statements

1 Many statement in one (or block statement).

2 Example in Pascal
begin
S1 ;
S2 ;
S3 ;
end
3 In C, C++, Java {S1 ; S2 ; S3}
4 There are differences between :
if (a<b) c=d ;
if(a<b) c=d ; e=f ;
if(a<b){c=d ; e=f}

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 Chapter Goals Generalities
Expressions Assignment Statements
Statements Compound Statements
Exercises Other statements

Other statements
1 Selection with if and switch case or case of "selector".
2 Iterative statements. Loops are terminated in one of two ways :
either by a condition being fulfilled,
or by completing a fixe number of iterations.
Example : for loop, while loop, repeat loop.
A mechanism for iterating over the elements of a data structure is known as
an iterator.
3 goto statement. Jumps
4 Exception handling.
During programming excution, "exceptional" evens may occur.
Such exceptional occurrences can arise as a result of errors,
such as attempted division by zero, erroneous user input,
an array subscript going out of bounds,
unexpectedly encoutering the end of the file.
Java : try { }catch(){ ... }

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 13 / 17
 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Agenda

1 Chapter Goals

2 Expressions

3 Statements

4 Exercises

Mai 02nd 2024, Dr.Thomas MESSI NGUELE Programming Languages – Expressions and Statem. 14 / 17
 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Exercises

13 - Compare Pascal precedence rules with C precedence rules.

14 - Compare Pascal case of with C switch case.
15 - According to you, how does C compiler handle the ternary operator ?
16 - Explain why exception handling is important in embedded systems.

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 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

Bibliography

WILSON, Leslie B. et CLARK, Robert George. Comparative programming

languages. Pearson Education, 2001.
MACLENNAN, Bruce J. Principles of programming languages : design,
evaluation, and implementation. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1986.

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 Chapter Goals
Expressions
Statements
Exercises

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