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Language-independent specification

Computer programming standard meant to be interoperable across programming languages

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated December 29, 2025

A language-independent specification (LIS) is a programming language specification providing a common interface usable for defining semantics applicable toward arbitrary language bindings.

LIS's are language-agnostic; they mitigate the risk that a certain language binding might reduce compatibility with other languages. An ideal LIS allows the language bindings to take advantage of features of a programming language uncompromisingly.

Examples of LIS include Interface description language (IDL), Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).

Recursive transcompiling can be used to distribute a language independent specification across many different technologies, with each technology potentially keeping an authoritative description of a different part of the specification. Recursive transcompiling provides the general methodology for distributing this authoritative information through the rest of the derivative code pipeline.

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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Language-independent specification”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Related topics

Derivative code

Derivative code or Chameleon code is source code which has been derived entirely from one or more other machine readable file formats. If recursive transcompiling is used in the development process, some code will survive all the way through the pipeline from beginning to end, and then back to the beginning again.

ISO/IEC 10967

ISO/IEC 10967, Language independent arithmetic, is a series of standards on computer arithmetic. It is compatible with IEEE 754 (also published as IEC 60559), and much of the specifications are for IEEE 754 special values (though such values are not required by LIA itself, unless the parameter iec559 is true).

ISO/IEC 11404

ISO/IEC 11404, General Purpose Datatypes, are a collection of datatypes defined independently of any particular programming language or implementation. These datatypes can be used to describe interfaces to existing libraries without having to specify the language (such as Fortran or C).