Praxis - An Alternative to Ada ®?

This report describes Praxis, a modern, complete, block structured, strongly typed, programming language, Comparable to Ada®, and with special emphasis toward meeting systems programming requirements on all level machines. Praxis is considered as a possible alternative to Ada® in certain applications. Praxis has been used since 1980 on the distributed control system for the Nova high energy laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A description of the intended applications, the history of developement, and an overview of the features of the language with comparisons to the Pascal and Ada® languages, are given. The features are described in four categories: general appearance, power, insurance of freedom from errors, and manageability. Work performed under the auspices of the U. S. Depertment of Energy by the Lawrence Livermore Laboraory under Contract W-7405-Eng-48