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Statement ○꠹ᴾᴿᴳᴿᴹ｜Definition｜1st｜20251119205401-00-⌔
Statement (computer science) - Wikipedia
Statement (computer science)
In computer programming, a statement is a syntactic unit of an imperative programming language that expresses some action to be carried out.1 A program written in such a language is formed by a sequence of one or more statements. A statement may have internal components (e.g. expressions).
Many programming languages (e.g. Ada, Algol 60, C, Java, Pascal)2 make a distinction between statements and definitions/declarations. A definition or declaration specifies the data on which a program is to operate, while a statement specifies the actions to be taken with that data.
Statements which cannot contain other statements are simple; those which can contain other statements are compound.3
The appearance of a statement (and indeed a program) is determined by its syntax or grammar. The meaning of a statement is determined by its semantics.
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
“statement”. webopedia. September 1996. Retrieved 2015-03-03. ↩
Dahl, Ole-Johan; Myhrhaug, Bjørn; Nygaard, Kristen (1970). Common Base Language (PDF) (Report). Norwegian Computing Center. Archived from the original on 2024-09-19. Retrieved 20 August 2025. ↩
Backus, J.W.; Bauer, F.L.; Green, J.; Katz, C.; McCarthy, J.; Naur, P.; Perlis, A.J.; Rutishauser, H.; Samuelson, K.; Vauquois, B.; Wegstein, J.H.; van Wijngaarden, A.; Woodger, M. Naur, Peter (ed.). “Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60”. mass:werk. Section “4.1”. Retrieved January 23, 2021. ↩
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