Editing Free-form language

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In [[computer programming]], a '''free-form language''' is a [[programming language]] in which the positioning of [[character (computing)|characters]] on the page in program text is insignificant. Program text does not need to be placed in specific columns as on old [[punched card]] systems, and frequently ends of lines are insignificant. [[Whitespace character]]s are used only to delimit [[token (parser)|tokens]], and have no other significance. Free-form languages allow a greater degree of flexibility and have fewer syntactic rules to learn, which could lower the entry barrier for beginners.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Winkler |first1=Till |last2=Flatscher |first2=Rony G. |date=2023 |title=Cognitive Load in Programming Education: Easing the Burden on beginners with REXX |url=https://research.wu.ac.at/files/46150789/CECIIS_CLT_REXX.pdf |work=In Central European Conference on Information and Intelligent Systems |publisher=Faculty of Organization and Informatics Varazdin |pages=171–178}}</ref>

Most free-form languages descend from [[ALGOL]], including [[C (programming language)|C]], [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], and [[Perl]]. [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] languages are free-form, although they do not descend from ALGOL. [[Rexx]] and its dialects [[Object REXX|ooRexx]] and [[NetRexx]] are mostly free-form, though in some cases whitespace characters are [[concatenation]] operators. [[SQL]], though not a full programming language, is also free-form.

Most free-form languages are also [[structured programming]] languages, which is sometimes thought to go along with the free-form syntax: Earlier [[imperative programming]] languages such as [[Fortran 77]] used particular columns for line numbers, which many structured languages do not use or need.

Structured languages exist which are not free-form, such as [[ABC (programming language)|ABC]], [[Curry (programming language)|Curry]], [[Haskell (programming language)|Haskell]], [[Python (programming language)|Python]] and others. Many of these use some variant of the [[off-side rule]], in which indentation, rather than keywords or braces, is used to group blocks of code.

==See also==
* [[Indent style]]
* [[Obfuscated code]]
* [[Curly bracket programming language|Curly-bracket programming language]]{{snd}} Many free-form languages are within this set.

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Programming language classification]]


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