International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
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ISO/IEC 11404:2007
Scope
This International Standard specifies the nomenclature and shared semantics for a collection of datatypes
commonly occurring in programming languages and software interfaces, referred to as the General-Purpose
Datatypes (GPD). It specifies both primitive datatypes, in the sense of being defined ab initio without reference
to other datatypes, and non-primitive datatypes, in the sense of being wholly or partly defined in terms of other
datatypes. The specification of datatypes in this International Standard is “general-purpose” in the sense that
the datatypes specified are classes of datatype of which the actual datatypes used in programming languages
and other entities requiring the concept “datatype” are particular instances. These datatypes are general in
nature; thus, they serve a wide variety of information processing applications.
This International Standard expressly distinguishes three notions of datatype:
⎯ the conceptual, or abstract, notion of a datatype, which characterizes the datatype by its nominal values
and properties;
⎯ the structural notion of a datatype, which characterizes the datatype as a conceptual organization of
specific component datatypes with specific functionalities; and
⎯ the implementation notion of a datatype, which characterizes the datatype by defining the rules for
representation of the datatype in a given environment.
This International Standard defines the abstract notions of many commonly used primitive and non-primitive
datatypes which possess the structural notion of atomicity. This International Standard does not define all
atomic datatypes; it defines only those which are common in programming languages and software interfaces.
This International Standard defines structural notions for the specification of other non-primitive datatypes,
and provides a means by which datatypes not defined herein can be defined structurally in terms of the GPDs
defined herein.
This International Standard defines a partial terminology for implementation notions of datatypes and provides
for the use of this terminology in the definition of datatypes. The primary purpose of this terminology is to
identify common implementation notions associated with datatypes and to distinguish them from conceptual
notions.
This International Standard specifies the required elements of mappings between the GPDs and the datatypes
of some other language. This International Standard does not specify the precise form of a mapping, but
rather the required information content of a mapping.
ISO/IEC 11404:2007 history
2007ISO/IEC 11404:2007 Information technology - General-Purpose Datatypes (GPD)
1996ISO/IEC 11404:1996 Information technology - Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces - Language-independent datatypes