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The Language

The DARWIN language is a Genetic Algorithm language and as such has a slightly more complex syntax and semantics compared to a normal imperative language. This is due to the fact that it builds on the concepts of an imperative language, but adds genetic algorithms specific concepts by using pseudo object oriented constructs. In the following section the meaning of each syntactic construct is defined and its impact on the resulting program code is identified.

The DARWIN language is designed to cover the following set of syntactic entities:

The Genetic Constructs are the key entities in the DARWIN language, since they introduce all of the Genetic Algorithm awairness. There are four important Genetic Constructs - the gene, chromosome, population and genetic algorithm definitions. The Genetic Construct definitions are composed of member declarations and moderator specifications. The members of DARWIN basic types can have an optional domain information specified. In addition, ``frozen'' data members can be specified, which occupy space in the representation and are not handled in any of the generated code. Each of the genetic algorithm constructs will be discussed in detail in their associated subsections that will follow.

The function definitions in DARWIN are very similar to C function syntax and are just logically divided into Moderator and User Function definitions. Syntactically, these two definitions are equivalent. Following is the detailed presentation of the DARWIN language syntax and semantics.



Subsections
next up previous
Next: Domain Information Specification Up: The DARWIN Language Previous: Design Idea
Gokturk Ucoluk 2003-09-15