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Turing

Language type:

S - block-structured

Description:

Turing is a structured programming language designed for teaching computing principles and for simple graphics. Used mainly in high schools, Turing is meant to be simple and usable while supporting good programming practices.
The syntax of Turing is similar to that of Pascal, but much more forgiving. Data types include numbers, characters, and strings, plus arrays and records. Like Pascal, Turing also supports variant records and references. Looping and conditional constructs are available in the language, and seem a little more comprehensive than those in Pascal. Subroutines and functions are used to modularize Turing programs, and recursion is also supported. In addition to commonplace structured programming statements, Turing also supports specification of invariants and assertions, like Eiffel, to help encourage sound algorithm construction.
Recent versions of Turing have gained libraries for supporting graphics and GUIs, animation, and other multi-media operations.
A variant of Turing called "Turing Plus" was designed for system programming; it featured type casting and multi-processing, plus unsigned numeric types and other system programming conveniences. This dialect seems to be no longer available but many of the features in it seem to have been rolled into Object-Oriented Turing (OOT).
Turing is available for Windows, Mac, and Unix operating systems, but only as a commercial product. There is no free downloadable version or documentation. Schools can get free trial licences.

Origin:

R.C. Holt et al, Univ. of Toronto, 1987

See Also:

Pascal    Eiffel   

Remarks:

Turing seems to be more popular in Canada than in other parts of the world.
Originally, Turing was conceived as a kind of "super-Pascal", a language with Pascal's ease-of-use and expressiveness, but without some of Pascal's recognized problems. The operation of programs written in Turing was defined formally using axiomatic semantics, very unusual for a language meant for teaching beginners. It was developed by the Holt Group (under Prof. R.C. Holt) at U. of Toronto in the late 1980s and early 90s, and since about 1994 has been a commericial product targeted mainly at teachers.
An extended version of Turing, called Object-Oriented Turing, features inheritance, encapsulation, concurrency, delegation, and other OOP mechanisms, but with syntax very similar to that of original Turing. (Relationship seems to be like that of C and C .) Unfortunately, very little detailed information about OOT seems to be available on the WWW.

Links:

Turing's old home at U. of Toronto

Technical Info on Turing, Holt Software

Programming in Turing

Lecture notes introducing Turing

Date:

Last updated 11/21/98

Sample code:

Placeholder until I get a better example.

   % Roll a die until you get 6.  (This is a comment)
     var die : int
     loop
          randint (die, 1, 6)
          exit when die = 6
          put "This roll is ", die
     end loop
     put "Stopping with roll of 6"

Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some examples copyright of their respective authors. Some technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.

Comments on this dictionary, corrections and suggestions, are all welcome. Please use email, the address is ziring@home.com