[HECnet] Algol compiler for VAX/VMS?

[Rob Jarratt]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE]
On Behalf Of Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Sent: 05 April 2013 19:12
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Algol compiler for VAX/VMS?


On Apr 5, 2013, at 1:44 PM, Mark Wickens wrote:

On 05/04/2013 17:36, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
Bob There is also a full Algol68 compiler called algol68g
http://jmvdveer.home.xs4all.nl/algol.html-- but that one is targeted to
Intel
CPUs. I suppose you could write a new back end... paul
This might be worth a look - isn't it an interpreter rather than a
compiler?
You chuck an .a68 file at it and it runs it.
Otherwise, I might be wrong ;)

Regards, Mark.

It's described as a compiler, I haven't tried it yet.

BTW, please note that Algol 60 and Algol 68 are entirely different
languages.   Algol 68 is at least as distant from Algol 60 as Modula-2 is.
The
similarity in names is quite misleading.

Not only are the languages very different, but so is the implementation
complexity.   An Algol 60 compiler is not all that hard.   One could easily
imagine trimming down the Pascal front end for GCC to do Algol 60 instead.
There are one or two oddball things to cope with (like call by name) but
apart from that, it's not difficult to parse and introduces no great
complexities.   Algol 68 is a very different matter.   The ALgol 68 G page
talks
about its context sensitive grammar and various other things that might
explain why algol68g is a separate implementation rather than a GCC front
end.   (Too bad it isn't, then you'd have a VAX port at the cost of a
build, give
or take the GCC VAX code generation bugs.)

	paul
[Rob Jarratt] 

I used to mess about with Algol 68, a really interesting language. I used to
use Algol68C on a DECSYSTEM-20. I have often looked to see if I could find a
copy but have never succeeded. If anyone knows where a copy might be found
that would be amazing!

Regards

Rob