In computer programming, the semicolon is often used to separate multiple statements (for example, in Perl, Pascal, and SQL; see Pascal: Semicolons as statement separators). In other languages, semicolons are called "terminator"s and are required after every statement (such as in PL/I, Java, and the C family). Today semicolons as terminators has largely won out, but this was a divisive issue in programming languages from the 1960s into the 1980s. An influential and frequently-cited study in this debate was , which concluded strongly in favor of semicolon as a terminator: "The most important was that having a semicolon as a statement terminator was better than having a semicolon as a statement separator." The study has been criticized as flawed by proponents of semicolon as a separator, due to participants being familiar with a semicolon-as-terminator language and unrealistically strict grammar. Nevertheless, the debate ended in favor of semicolon as terminator. Therefore, semicolon provides structure to the programming language.