The language is not case sensitive. A nonterminal, X, is represented by enclosing it in angle brackets, e.g. hXi. A terminal is represented without angle brackets. A bold typeface is used to represent terminal symbols in the language and reserved words, whereas a non-bold typeface is used for symbols that are used to group terminals and nonterminals together. Source code is kept in files with the .ccl extension, e.g. hello world.ccl.

The reserved words in the language are var, const, return, integer, boolean, void, main, if, else, while and skip. The following are tokens in the language: , ; : = { } ( ) + - ∼ || && == != < <= > >=. Integers are represented by a string of one or more digits (‘0’-‘9’) that do not start with the digit ‘0’, but may start with a minus sign (‘-’), e.g. 123, -456. Identifiers are represented by a string of letters, digits or underscore character (‘ ’) beginning with a letter. Identifiers cannot be reserved words. Comments can appear between any two tokens. There are two forms of comment: one is delimited by /* and */ and can be nested; the other begins with // and is delimited by the end of line and this type of comments may not be nested.

Declaration made outside a function (including main) are global in scope. Declarations inside a function are local in scope to that function. Function arguments are passed-by-value. Variables or constants cannot be declared using the void type. The skip statement does nothing.