In a message dated 02-08-97, Andrew Grillet said to David Noon about Algol 68

Hi Andrew,

AG>Algol-58, the orignal one, was not intended for computer 
AG>use, but as a language
AG>for mathmaticians to express algorithms in.

ALGOL 58 was a draft IFIP document. It was indeed a formalism, but for
algorithms in general, not just mathematical ones. [But most of the committee
members were mathematicians, hence the "algebraic" slant of ALGOL
58 & 60.]

 DN> Both languages lacked BCD, which made them useless for financial apps.
 DN> This was the real killer.

AG>Could have been added pretty easily by anyone who wanted to.

No, there was no way to add a 'mode' for BCD. All new modes in ALGOL 68 have to
be defined in terms of the native ones. The best you could hope for would be a
kludge like so many BCD classes for C++.

AG>Really? I'll try Grey Matter 'RSN'.

I would try One Stop first, since they are OS/2 specialists.

I e-mailed Dave Lloyd at Oxford & Cambridge Compilers Ltd., and the price
direct from them was UKP260+VAT. Hopefully the resellers will be cheaper.

If you manage to obtain a copy please post a short review. At least George
White and I would be interested.

Regards

Dave

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