P.D. Terry (home page)
Department of Computer Science
Rhodes University
GRAHAMSTOWN 6140, South Africa
Published by Addison Wesley, Wokingham, England © 1987
ISBN/ISSN: 0-201-17438-3, 460 pages, 6 x 9 inches, paperbound
This book provides an introduction to programming for readers with little or no experience of imperative programming. It uses pre-ISO Modula-2, the original form of the programming language designed by Niklaus Wirth as a successor to Pascal. Modula-2 was designed both as a systems programming language, and as one with high-level abstraction features for dealing with complex systems. While the system programming language features lie beyond the scope of the book, the abstraction features have enabled a vital approach to programming to be adopted, one which continually stresses the importance of data abstraction when solving problems. The text is supplemented with a wealth of examples and exercises, making it an ideal course book for first year students.
1 Introduction 2 Simple algorithm design 3 Towards computer coding 4 Simple Modula-2 coding 5 Flow of control in Modula-2 6 Compilation, execution and testing 7 Structured programs - Procedures 8 Structured programs - Modules 9 Structured data - the Array 10 Modula-2 structured types - Arrays 11 Non-numerical scalar types 12 Modula-2 semi-structured types - Sets 13 Modula-2 types - Characters and Strings 14 Modula-2 structured types - Records 15 Modula-2 types - Dynamic data structures 16 More about Procedures 17 More about Modules 18 Generic types and the SYSTEM module 19 Large volumes of data - Files.
Files containing the source code of the examples in the text may be obtained by contacting the author.