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Procedural languages are also known as third Generation languages (3GLs). In a procedural language, a program is designed using procedures. A procedure is a sequence of instructions having a unique name. The instructions of the procedure are executed with the reference of its name.
In procedural programming languages, the program instructions are written in a sequence or in a specific order in which they must be executed to solve a specific problem. It means that the order of program instructions is very important. Some popular procedural languages are described below:
1. FORTRAN
FORTRAN stands for FORmula TRANslation. It was developed in 1957 for IBM computers. It was the first earliest high-level programming language used to introduce the concept of modular programming. It has been revised many times. Its commonly used version is FORTRAN 77.
2. COBOL
COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language. It was developed in 1959. This high-level language was specially developed for business and commercial applications; it was suitable for handling large amount of data such as:
- To prepare payroll.
- To process credit and debit account.
- To control inventory system and many other business applications.
3. PASCAL
This programming language is named in the honour of Pascal, a mathematician and scientist who invented the first mechanical calculator. structured programming language and is popular in computer science developed in 1971. It is suitable for scientific field.
4. ADA
It is developed in 1980 and is named in the honour of Lady Augusta ADA. She is the first computer programmer. The high-level structured language Pascal was used as a model for the development of ADA language.
5. C-Language
Dennis Ritchi and Brian Karnighan developed it in 1972 at Bell Laboratories. It is a high-level language but it can also support assembly language codes (low-level codes). It is because; C-language is also referred to as middle-level language. The program written in C can be compiled and run on any type of computer. In other words, programs written in C-language are portable.
C-language is a structured programming language. The main feature of C- language is that, it uses a large number of built-in functions used to perform various tasks. The user can also create its own functions.
C-language was designed for writing system software. Today, many software are written in C. They include operating systems and application programs. UNIX operating system is also developed in C. Like assembly and machine language, C- language also provides facilities for controlling the hardware. It is also used to solve businessand scientific problems. It is a general- purpose language.