> From: Akim Demaille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 29 Aug 2001 13:09:46 +0200
>
> Paul> The "&" is my own invention, but the "t" came from the source
> Paul> code of the ALGOL68C compiler, written by Steve Bourne (of
> Paul> Bourne shell fame),
>
> Is there is any place where I could actually make my education and
> learn such things? I mean, I have a great deal of respect for Algol 68,
> but I know very little about its history.
You had to ask. :-) For a really brief intro, please see:
C.H.A. Koster
A shorter history of ALGOL68
http://www.csd.uu.se/~richardc/txt/ALGOL68.txt
For a longer story, full of juicy politics, please see:
C.H.A. Koster
The Making of Algol 68
http://www.nunan.fsnet.co.uk/algol68/Making-Algol68.zip
And there is the more official version, at:
Charles Lindsey
A history of ALGOL 68
2nd ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages (1993)
pages 97-132
http://www.acm.org/pubs/citations/proceedings/plan/154766/p97-lindsey/
(This is the abstract; the full paper requires an ACM library subscription.)
There is also a brief introduction to Algol 68 in the same
proceedings, but to my mind the best textual introduction to Algol 68 is:
Andrew Tanenbaum
A Tutorial on Algol 68
ACM Computing Surveys 8, 2 (1976), 155-190.
This is the same Andrew Tanenbaum resposible for Minix, the immediate
inspiration for Linux.
If you want more history, working compilers, etc, please see the nice
index at:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Algol_68/
I suggest ALGOL 68S <http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl/> but there are others.
PS. While researching this I found that ALGOL68C is still
commercially available from a little-known scientific consultancy firm
based in Cambridge, England, one that does security work for the UK
government! I can't help wondering whether any of my 25-year-old code
snippets are still in it. (Perhaps now you see why I prefer the GPL. :-)
