Karel (programming language)

Karel is an educational programming language for beginners, created by Richard E. Pattis and presented in his book Karel The Robot: A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Programming. Pattis used the language in his courses at Stanford University in California. The Programming Language Database dates the language to 1981 and places its early development at the University of California Irvine. A program is wrapped in the words BEGINNING-OF-PROGRAM and END-OF-PROGRAM, new commands are introduced with DEFINE ... AS, repetition is written as ITERATE 3 TIMES, and the executable part is bracketed by BEGINNING-OF-EXECUTION and END-OF-EXECUTION, as in the database example that defines a turnRight command from three turnLeft commands. The database lists Pascal, Java, JavaScript and RoboMind as related languages. Karel is a teaching language, not a tool for production software.