Editing Low-level programming language (section)

== Low-level programming in high-level languages ==
During the late 1960s and 1970s, [[High-level programming language|high-level languages]] that included some degree of access to low-level programming functions, such as [[IBM PL/S|PL/S]], [[BLISS]], [[BCPL]], extended [[ALGOL]] and [[NEWP]] (for [[Burroughs large systems]]/Unisys Clearpath MCP systems), and [[C (programming language)|C]], were introduced. One method for this is [[inline assembly]], in which assembly code is embedded in a high-level language that supports this feature. Some of these languages also allow architecture-dependent [[Optimizing compiler|compiler optimization directives]] to adjust the way a compiler uses the target processor architecture.

Furthermore, as referenced above, the following block of C is from the GNU Compiler and shows the inline assembly ability of C. Per the GCC documentation this is a simple copy and addition code. This code displays the interaction between a generally high level language like C and its middle/low level counter part Assembly. Although this may not make C a natively low level language these facilities express the interactions in a more direct way.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Extended Asm (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)) |url=https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html |access-date=2024-04-27 |website=gcc.gnu.org}}</ref> <syntaxhighlight lang="c">
int src = 1;
int dst;   

asm ("mov %1, %0\n\t"
    "add $1, %0"
    : "=r" (dst) 
    : "r" (src));

printf("%d\n", dst);
</syntaxhighlight>