general-purpose language

{{Short description|Computer language}}

A general-purpose language is a computer language that is broadly applicable across application domains, and lacks specialized features for a particular domain. This is in contrast to a domain-specific language (DSL), which is specialized to a particular application domain. The line is not always sharp, as a language may have specialized features for a particular domain but be applicable more broadly, or conversely may in principle be capable of broad application but in practice used primarily for a specific domain.{{cite web |url=https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/general-purpose-language |title=Definition of general-purpose language |publisher=PCMag |accessdate=April 6, 2020 |quote=A programming language that is used to solve a wide variety of problems. Languages such as C, C++ and Java are examples. Contrast with special-purpose language. See general purpose.}}

General-purpose languages are further subdivided by the kind of language, and include:

• General-purpose markup languages, such as XML{{cite web |url=https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/CS349W/lectures/markup.html |title=Markup Languages: XML, HTML, XHTML |date=2008 |author=John Ousterhout |website=stanford.edu |accessdate=April 6, 2020}}
• General-purpose modeling language such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML){{cite journal|title=Clock constraint specification language: specifying clock constraints with UML/MARTE|year=2008 |doi=10.1007/s11334-008-0055-2|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52790845.pdf|last1=Mallet |first1=Frédéric |journal=Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=309–314 |s2cid=10895550 }}
• General-purpose programming languages, such as C, Java, PHP, or Python{{cite web |url=https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/blog/history-of-programming-languages/ |title=Programming Languages Through the Years |date=July 30, 2015 |publisher=The Software Guild |accessdate=April 6, 2020 |archive-date=February 7, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210207202507/https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/blog/history-of-programming-languages/ |url-status=dead }}