What programming languages are simply abstractions on top of another programming language?

Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Sat, 18 Jun 2022 19:42:55 +0000

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From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2022 19:42:55 +0000
Organization: Compilers Central
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Keywords: design, macros, comment
Posted-Date: 20 Jun 2022 18:06:43 EDT
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Hi Folks,


I am reading "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger. One of the things that
I've learned is that Ratfor is a simple abstraction on top of Fortran. For
example, Ratfor provides a while loop. The while loop can be mechanically
converted to Fortran if-then and goto statements. Really cool!


That got me to wondering, "What other programming languages are simply
abstractions on top of an existing programming language?"


/Roger
[The infamous m4 macrogenerator is used to build what are in effect new
languages like the sendmail configuration and GNU Autoconf. -John]

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