andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) (12/14/88)
A recent posting (which expired here before I could reply) asked for
references on the Algol 68 programming language.
There have been two definitions, "reports" defining the language, from
the responsible ISO committee. The original "report" appeared in 1968
(hence the language's name); the "revised report," which is the current
definition of the language, came out in 1975. This latter was printed
in the journal "Acta Informatica", volume 5 (1975), pages 1-236, and in
SIGPLAN Notices 12 (5) 1977.
However, this document is utterly unreadable unless you're willing to
spend weeks in talmudic study. (I did this one summer ... a real mind
stretcher.) Before you do this, you should first bone up on
W-grammars, the two-level syntactic description mechanism used in the
report. By far the best way to do this is with the quite interesting
book "Grammars for Programming Languages" by J. Craig Cleaveland and
Robert C. Uzgalis, published in 1977 by Elsevier North-Holland Inc. I
understand that this is out of print, but any good CS library should
have a copy.
The committee foresaw that people would want to learn the language
without becoming Algol 68 scholars, so they commissioned the "Informal
Introduction to Algol 68, Revised Edition" by C. H. Lindsey and S. G.
van der Meulen, published in 1977 by North-Holland. (Be sure to get
the revised edition; the original edition describes the original 1968
language.) This book is everything you would want in a comprehensive
yet readable discussion of the language.
-=- Andrew Klossner (uunet!tektronix!hammer!frip!andrew) [UUCP]
(andrew%frip.gwd.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA]