On 2025-02-16 7:32 a.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
A lot of early "ALGOL" compilers did major subsetting because it was considered to hard
to do the real language. Those subsets may not actually bear any real resemblance to the actual
language. For example, a "subset" that omits recursion is not ALGOL but rather a mongrel
joke.
I disagree here, recursion is just one method of problem solving.
While I think, function nesting is too complex for most use, the use of
stack based local variables in blocks was a important step foreword.
Playing around with META-II, compiler compiler I discovered it had
no way of handling local variables and symbol tables, as it just moved
text around.I could parse fine, but not generate code.
Did many people believe back then that one could just shuffle text
around to solve new programing languages like Algol, where it might work
with something like Fortran, with some sort of macro processing language.
paul
