Gilda is a general purpose procedural programming language for writing reliable production quality programs. After much experimentation and analysis, constructs were chosen based on clarity and practicality. Careful attention was paid to software maintainability; particularly by including provisions to help you manage side effects.

The language design has evolved from extensive experience with a substantial code base. Alternate choices were tried in small experiments and more promising notations were tested on a larger scale. New features were only added if they noticably reduced the size of the code base or just made coding a little easier.

Gilda has features to improve:

• correctness by avoiding notations that lead to common programming mistakes,
• convenience by supporting the most prevalent coding idioms, and
• clarity by using a syntax that is easy to read.

This informal overview briefly describes interesting language features. It will leave you with a good idea how Gilda programs are written, but it is not intended to be a tutorial.

• Procedure
Statement Syntax
Function Procedure
Method Procedure
Sequence Procedure



• Data Representation
Primitive Type
Micro and Macro
Pointer Variable
Enumeration and Structure
Array Variable



• Expression
Arithmetic Expression
Conditional Expression
Intrinsic Function



• Command
Assignment Command
If Condition
Do Loop



• Input and Output
Print Command
Trace Command
Input Command



• Exception Handling
Assert Condition
Catch Exception
Precondition and Postcondition



• Build a Program or Library
Class File
Build a Program
Build a Library
Map File
Data File