Question

I am learning C from ‘Programming in C’ by Stephen Kochan.

Though the author is careful from the beginning only not to confuse the students with jargon, but occasionally he has used few terms without explaining their meaning. I have figured out the meaning of many such terms with the help of internet.

However, I could not understand the exactly meaning of the phrase ‘language construct’, and unfortunately the web doesn’t provide a good explanation.

Considering I am a beginner, what does ‘language construct’ mean?

Answer 1

First, you need to understand what a constructed language Formal Language is. All programming languages are constructed formal languages (read the reference). You may then read a little bit about compiler construction, including this reference as well.

Going back to your question, consider this: The English language (a natural language) has tokens ‘A-Z/0-9/,;"…’ which we use to build "words" and we use languages rules to build sentences out of words. So, in the English language, a construct is what we build out of tokens.

Consider this brick-and-mortar example: Imagine if you set out to build a house, the basic materials you might use are: sand, iron, wood, cement, water (just five for simplicity). Anything you build out of these 4 or 5+ items would be a "construct", which in turn helps you build your house.

I have intentionally omitted details to further simplify the answer; hope this is helpful.