OpenGL Shading Language

The OpenGL Shading Language, usually shortened to GLSL, is a high-level shading language whose syntax is based on the C programming language. The OpenGL Architecture Review Board created it so that developers could control the graphics pipeline more directly, without writing ARB assembly language or hardware-specific languages. It first appeared as an extension to OpenGL 1.4 and was formally included in the OpenGL 2.0 core in 2004. GLSL programs are shaders passed as strings to the graphics driver, which includes the compiler, so each vendor can optimize for its own hardware. The language has the operators of C and C++ without pointers, supports loops, branching and function overloading, forbids recursion, and uses a subset of the C preprocessor. Shaders can also be compiled to SPIR-V for Vulkan.