Reserved word

In a programming language, a reserved word (also known as a reserved identifier or keyword) is a word with special meaning, which generally cannot be used as usual identifiers, such as variable names or function names. For example, in most procedural language, the word "if" is reserved, as it indicates a conditional, and cannot be used as a variable name. These words are predefined in the language’s formal specifications. Typically, reserved words include labels for primitive data types in languages that support a type system, and identify programming constructs such as loops, blocks, conditionals, and branches.

The list of reserved words in a language are defined when a language is developed. Occasionally, depending on the flexibility of the language specification, vendors implementing a compiler may extend the specification by including non-standard features. Also, as a language matures, standards bodies governing a language may choose to extend the language to include additional features such as object-oriented capabilities in a traditionally procedural language. Sometimes the specification for a programming language will have reserved words that are intended for possible use in future versions. In Java, const and goto are reserved words — they have no meaning in Java but they also cannot be used as identifiers. By "reserving" the terms, they can be implemented in future versions of Java, if desired, without "breaking" older Java source code. Reserved words may not be redefined by the programmer, unlike predefined functions, methods, or subroutines, which can often be overridden in some capacity. The name of a predefined function, method, or subroutine is typically categorized as an identifier instead of a reserved word.

Definition

Some use the terms "keyword" and "reserved word" interchangeably, while others distinguish usage, say by using "keyword" to mean a word that is special only in certain contexts but "reserved word" to mean a special word that cannot be used as a user-defined name. The meaning of keywords — and, indeed, the meaning of the notion of keyword — differs widely from language to language.

The "Java Language Specification" uses the term "keyword". The ISO 9899 standard for the C programming language uses the term "keyword".

In many languages, such as C and similar environments like C++, a keyword is a reserved word which identifies a syntactic form. Words used in control flow constructs, such as if, then, and else are keywords. In these languages, keywords cannot also be used as the names of variables or functions.

In some languages, such as ALGOL and Algol 68, keywords cannot be written verbatim, but must be stropped. This means that keywords must be marked somehow. E.g. by quoting them or by prefixing them by a special character.

Some languages, such as PostScript, are extremely liberal in this approach, allowing core keywords to be redefined for specific purposes.

In Common Lisp, the term "keyword" (or "keyword symbol") is used for a special sort of symbol, or identifier. Unlike other symbols, which usually stand for variables or functions, keywords are self-quoting and self-evaluating^:98 and are interned in the KEYWORD package. Keywords are usually used to label named arguments to functions, and to represent symbolic values.

Languages vary as to what is provided as a keyword and what is a library routine. Some languages, for instance, provide keywords for input/output operations whereas in others these are library routines. In Python (versions earlier than 3.0) and many BASIC dialects, print is a keyword. In contrast, the C and Lisp equivalents printf and format are functions in the standard library.

Typically, when a programmer attempts to use a keyword for a variable or function name, a compilation error will be triggered. In most modern editors, the keywords are automatically set to have a particular text colour to remind or inform the programmers that they are keywords.

In languages with macros or lazy evaluation, control flow constructs such as if can be implemented as macros or functions. In languages without these expressive features, they are generally keywords.

Comparison by language

Not all languages have the same numbers of reserved words. For example, Java (and other C derivatives) has a rather sparse complement of reserved words—approximately 50 – whereas COBOL has approximately 400. At the other end of the spectrum, pure Prolog has none at all.

The number of reserved words in a language has little to do with how “powerful” a language is. COBOL was designed in the 1950s as a business language and was made to be self-documenting using English-like structural elements such as verbs, clauses, sentences, sections and divisions. C, on the other hand, was written to be very terse (syntactically) and to get more text on the screen. For example, compare the equivalent blocks of code from C and COBOL to calculate weekly earnings:

// Calculation in C:
 
if (salaried)
        amount = 40 * payrate;
else
        amount = hours * payrate;

* Calculation in COBOL:
 
IF Salaried THEN
        MULTIPLY Payrate BY 40 GIVING Amount
ELSE
        MULTIPLY Payrate BY Hours GIVING Amount
END-IF.

* Other example of calculation in COBOL:
 
IF Salaried 
        COMPUTE Amount = Payrate * 40
ELSE
        COMPUTE Amount = hours * payrate
END-IF.

Pure Prolog logic is expressed in terms of relations, and execution is triggered by running queries over these relations. Constructs such as loops are implemented using recursive relationships.

All three of these languages can solve the same types of “problems” even though they have differing numbers of reserved words. This “power” relates to their belonging to the set of Turing-complete languages.

Reserved words and language independence

Microsoft’s .NET Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification allows code written in 40+ different programming languages to be combined together into a final product. Because of this, identifier/reserved word collisions can occur when code implemented in one language tries to execute code written in another language. For example, a Visual Basic.NET library may contain a class definition such as:

' Class Definition of This in Visual Basic.NET:
 
Public Class this
        ' This class does something...
End Class

If this is compiled and distributed as part of a toolbox, a C# programmer, wishing to define a variable of type “this” would encounter a problem: 'this' is a reserved word in C#. Thus, the following will not compile in C#:

// Using This Class in C#:
 
this x = new this();  // Won't compile!

A similar issue arises when accessing members, overriding virtual methods, and identifying namespaces.

In order to work around this issue, the specification allows the programmer to (in C#) place the at-sign before the identifier which forces it to be considered an identifier rather than a reserved word by the compiler.

// Using This Class in C#:
 
@this x = new @this();  // Will compile!

For consistency, this usage is also permitted in non-public settings such as local variables, parameter names, and private members.

See also

• List of Java keywords
• Symbol (programming)

External links

• Reserved word
• Reserved Words for widely used languages