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object-src 'none'; report-uri /w/api.php?action=cspreport&format=json; report-to csp-report-to-endpoint last-modified: Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:55:03 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 age: 0 accept-ranges: bytes x-cache: cp2047 miss, cp2047 miss x-cache-status: miss server-timing: cache;desc="miss", host;desc="cp2047" strict-transport-security: max-age=106384710; includeSubDomains; preload report-to: { "group": "wm_nel", "max_age": 604800, "endpoints": [{ "url": "https://intake-logging.wikimedia.org/v1/events?stream=w3c.reportingapi.network_error&schema_uri=/w3c/reportingapi/network_error/1.0.0" }] } nel: { "report_to": "wm_nel", "max_age": 604800, "failure_fraction": 0.05, "success_fraction": 0.0} set-cookie: WMF-Last-Access=03-Jul-2026;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT set-cookie: WMF-Last-Access-Global=03-Jul-2026;Path=/;Domain=.wikipedia.org;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT set-cookie: WMF-DP=1ac;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT x-client-ip: 75.28.18.94 cache-control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate, no-transform vary: Accept-Encoding,X-Subdomain,Cookie,Authorization,User-Agent set-cookie: GeoIP=US:TX:McKinney:33.20:-96.62:v4; Path=/; secure; Domain=.wikipedia.org set-cookie: NetworkProbeLimit=0.001;Path=/;Secure;SameSite=None;Max-Age=3600 set-cookie: WMF-Uniq=mynPuG293FIf8qh63V1C3QOSAAAAAFvdPBZzP-ElCmTRRtS78nIeosxHN9Mt0HCt;Domain=.wikipedia.org;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;SameSite=None;Expires=Sat, 03 Jul 2027 00:00:00 GMT transfer-encoding: chunked x-request-id: d496365c-6c26-4ccd-9d60-73b901d2fad5 x-analytics: 8000 Data-driven programming - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Related paradigms 2 Applications 3 Benefits and issues 4 Languages 5 See also 6 References 7 External links Toggle the table of contents Data-driven programming 7 languages Español فارسی Magyar Qaraqalpaqsha Русский Српски / srpski 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Programming paradigm Not to be confused with Data-oriented design . This article needs more citations . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Data-driven programming" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2011 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this message ) In computer programming , data-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the program statements describe the data to be matched and the processing required rather than defining a sequence of steps to be taken. [ 1 ] Standard examples of data-driven languages are the text-processing languages sed and AWK , [ 1 ] and the document transformation language XSLT , where the data is a sequence of lines in an input stream – these are thus also known as line-oriented languages – and pattern matching is primarily done via regular expressions or line numbers. Related paradigms [ edit ] Data-driven programming is similar to event-driven programming , in that both are structured as pattern matching and resulting processing, and are usually implemented by a main loop , though they are typically applied to different domains. The condition/action model is also similar to aspect-oriented programming , where when a join point (condition) is reached, a pointcut (action) is executed. A similar paradigm is used in some tracing frameworks such as DTrace , where one lists probes (instrumentation points) and associated actions, which execute when the condition is satisfied. Adapting abstract data type design methods to object-oriented programming results in a data-driven design. [ 2 ] This type of design is sometimes used in object-oriented programming to define classes during the conception of a piece of software. Applications [ edit ] Data-driven programming is typically applied to streams of structured data, for filtering, transforming, aggregating (such as computing statistics), or calling other programs. Typical streams include log files , delimiter-separated values , or email messages, notably for email filtering . For example, an AWK program may take as input a stream of log statements, and for example send all to the console, write ones starting with WARNING to a "WARNING" file, and send an email to a sysadmin in case any line starts with "ERROR". It could also record how many warnings are logged per day. Alternatively, one can process streams of delimiter-separated values, processing each line or aggregated lines, such as the sum or max. In email, a language like procmail can specify conditions to match on some emails, and what actions to take (deliver, bounce, discard, forward, etc.). Some data-driven languages are Turing-complete , such as AWK and even sed, while others are intentionally very limited, notably for filtering. An extreme example of the latter is pcap , which only consists of filtering, with the only action being "capture". Less extremely, sieve has filters and actions, but in the base standard has no variables or loops, only allowing stateless filtering statements: each input element is processed independently. Variables allow state, which allow operations that depend on more than one input element, such as aggregation (summing inputs) or throttling (allow at most 5 mails per hour from each sender, or limiting repeated log messages). Data-driven languages frequently have a default action: if no condition matches, line-oriented languages may print the line (as in sed), or deliver a message (as in sieve). In some applications, such as filtering, matching is may be done exclusively (so only first matching statement), while in other cases all matching statements are applied. In either case, failure to match any pattern may be "default behavior" or can be seen as an error, to be caught by a catch-all statement at the end. Benefits and issues [ edit ] While the benefits and issues may vary between implementation, there are a few big potential benefits of and problems with this paradigm. Functionality simply requires that it knows the abstract data type of the variables it is working with. Functions and interfaces can be used on all objects with the same data fields, for instance the object's "position". Data can be grouped into objects or "entities" according to preference with little to no consequence. While data-driven design does prevent coupling of data and functionality, in some cases, data-driven programming has been argued to lead to bad object-oriented design , especially when dealing with more abstract data. This is because a purely data-driven object or entity is defined by the way it is represented . Any attempt to change the structure of the object would immediately break the functions that rely on it. As an example, one might represent driving directions as a series of intersections (two intersecting streets) where the driver must turn right or left. If an intersection (in the United States) is represented in data by the zip code (5-digit number) and two street names (strings of text), bugs may appear when a city where streets intersect multiple times is encountered. While this example may be oversimplified, restructuring of data is a fairly common problem in software engineering, either to eliminate bugs, increase efficiency, or support new features. Languages [ edit ] AWK [ 1 ] BASIC Clojure [ 3 ] fdm Lua [ 4 ] maildrop Oz Perl – data-driven programming as in AWK and sed is one paradigm supported by Perl procmail Raku - Raku has grammars (and regexes) built in, and so supports data-driven programming REBOL, a Redbol language Red, a Redbol language Ren-C, a Redbol language sed Sieve Tab (language) XSLT See also [ edit ] Array programming Backus–Naur form References [ edit ] 1 2 3 Stutz, Michael (September 19, 2006). "Get started with GAWK: AWK language fundamentals" . developerWorks . IBM . Archived from the original on 20 May 2011 . Retrieved 2010-10-23 . [AWK is] often called a data-driven language -- the program statements describe the input data to match and process rather than a sequence of program steps ↑ Wirfs-Brock, Rebecca ; Wilkerson, Brian (1989). "Object-oriented design: A responsibility-driven approach". Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications - OOPSLA '89 . New York: ACM . pp. 71– 75. doi : 10.1145/74877.74885 . ISBN 0897913337 . S2CID 7372657 . ↑ "Clojure" . www.clojure.org . Retrieved 2018-06-05 . ↑ Ierusalimschy, Roberto; de Figueiredo, Luiz Henrique; Celes, Waldemar (2017-02-03). "Lua 5.3 Reference Manual" . www.lua.org . Retrieved 2018-06-05 . External links [ edit ] "The important part is moving program logic away from hardwired control structures and into data." v t e Programming paradigms Imperative Structured Jackson structures Block-structured Modular Non-structured Procedural Programming in the large and in the small Design by contract Invariant-based Nested function Object-oriented Class-based , Prototype-based , Object-based Agent Immutable object Persistent Uniform function call syntax Declarative Functional Recursive Anonymous function ( Partial application ) Higher-order Purely functional Total Strict GADTs Dependent types Functional logic Point-free style Expression-oriented Applicative , Concatenative Function-level , Value-level Monad Dataflow Flow-based Reactive ( Functional reactive ) Signals Streams Synchronous Logic Abductive logic Answer set Constraint ( Constraint logic ) Inductive logic Nondeterministic Ontology Probabilistic logic Query Domain- specific language (DSL) Algebraic modeling Array Automata-based ( Action ) Command ( Spacecraft ) Differentiable End-user Grammar-oriented Interface description Language-oriented List comprehension Low-code Modeling Natural language Non-English-based Page description Pipes and filters Probabilistic Quantum Scientific Scripting Set-theoretic Simulation Stack-based System Tactile Templating Transformation ( Graph rewriting , Production , Pattern ) Visual Concurrent , parallel Actor-based Automatic mutual exclusion Choreographic programming Concurrent logic ( Concurrent constraint logic ) Concurrent OO Macroprogramming Multitier programming Organic computing Parallel programming models Partitioned global address space Process-oriented Relativistic programming Service-oriented Structured concurrency Metaprogramming Attribute-oriented Automatic ( Inductive ) Dynamic Extensible Generic Homoiconicity Interactive Macro ( Hygienic ) Metalinguistic abstraction Multi-stage Program synthesis ( Bayesian , by demonstration , by example , vibe coding ) Reflective Self-modifying code Symbolic Template Separation of concerns Aspects Components Data-driven Data-oriented Event-driven Features Literate Roles Subjects Comparisons/Lists Comparison ( multi-paradigm , object-oriented , functional ), List ( OO , by type ) v t e Types of programming languages Level Machine Assembly Compiled Interpreted Low-level High-level Very high-level Esoteric Generation First Second Third Fourth Fifth Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Data-driven_programming&oldid=1345483819 " Category : Programming paradigms Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles needing additional references from March 2011 All articles needing additional references This page was last edited on 26 March 2026, at 09:18  (UTC) . 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