A SURVEY OF FORTRAN, PASCAL AND C PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

This paper traces the evolutionary history and presents an impartial comparative study between three programming languages namely; FORTRAN, Pascal and C. The criteria of comparison is focused on expressivity, well-definedness, data types and structures, modularity, input/output facilities, portability, efficiency, pedagogy and generality. It also generally considers the characteristics of the three programming languages. Thereafter, it lists important criteria that influence die selection of a programming language. An evaluation of the three programming languages is then made utilizing some basic properties of programming languages in order to identify their selection by. entering an integer from 1 to 4, as a weight or relative importance factor for each of the criteria above. Integer 1 means that the criterion is poor while integer 4 means that the criterion is excellent. The study concluded that no one programming language is perfect for all people at all times for all jobs but the type of problem to be solved usually determines the selection of programming language to utilize.