Hi David,

-=> On 06 Feb 97  22:58:12 David Noon said to George White <=-

 
 GW>ALGOL-68 was the revision of the language. The original version was
 GW>ALGOL-60 (which incidentally was the first programming language I
 GW>learned).

 DN> ALGOL 68 was more than a revision. It was a wholesale rewrite,
 DN> including the replacement of BNF for its grammar specification. It was
 DN> a far more practical language than ALGOL 60, since it at least included
 DN> data structures and character strings. ALGOL 68 also had I/O defined
 DN> (TRANSPUT) whereas ALGOL 60 left that to the implementor; all ALGOL 60
 DN> implementations I have used have performed I/O differently. [Even 2
 DN> for the same platform -- General Electric GE-600 series -- were
 DN> different from each other, and incompatible.]

Algol-58, the orignal one, was not intended for computer use, but as a language
for mathmaticians to express algorithms in. Then some bright spark had the
idea of using computers to verify compliance with the language. It was only
later (after it had been shown that the syntax was inherently ambiguous)
that anyone sugested the computer might compile and execute the algorithms.
(After Fortran had shown the way.)

 DN> Both languages lacked BCD, which made them useless for financial apps.
 DN> This was the real killer.
 
Could have been added pretty easily by anyone who wanted to.

 GW>Algol-68 is supposed to be available for OS/2, but I don't know
 GW>anyone who has it.

I tried to buy it. I think it was a spoof, because no one ever answered the
phone number supplied. E-Mail address was also not valid.

 DN> When I win the national lottery I'm going to buy a copy, just for old
 DN> times' sake. Grey Matter and One Stop both have/had the compiler
 DN> listed in their catalogues. It was rather more expensive than Visual
 DN> Age C++, as I recall, and came with zero tools. ... :-(

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

Andrew


... A chip on the shoulder means wood further up.
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.30 [NR]