Array Languages

Definition

An array language is a programming language that supports the manipulation of entire arrays – or portions of arrays – as a basic unit of operation.

Discussion

Array languages provide two primary benefits: (1) They raise the level of abstraction, providing conciseness and programming convenience; (2) they provide a natural source of data parallelism, because the multiple elements of an array can typically be manipulated concurrently. Both benefits derive from the removal of control flow. For example, the following array statement assigns each element of the B array to its corresponding element in the A array:

$${\rm A : = B;}$$

This same expression could be expressed in a scalar language using an explicit looping construct:

$$\begin{array}{l} {\rm for \, i : = 1 \, to \, n} \\ \quad {\rm for \, j : = 1 \, to \, n} \\ \quad\quad {\rm A[i] \, [j] : = B[i] \, [j];} \\ \end{array}$$

The array statement is conceptually simpler because it removes the need to iterate over individual...