In this class we will express our algorithms in the programming language C and rely on a C compiler to translate our program to the native language of the machine. In the case of a programming language the sentences are programs.
Syntax describes the form or phrase structure of a sentence.
In the case of a programming language it describes well-formed programs. Semantics describes the meaning of a syntactically well-formed sentence. In the case of a programming language it characterizes the behavior of a program. We will take up this issue in subsequent notes. See, for example, Expressions and Types and Evaluation Rules for Expressions .