moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) (09/11/90)
Archive-name: dec-modula-3/09-Sep-90 Original-posting-by: moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) Original-subject: Re: Modula3 and Oberon requests Archive-site: gatekeeper.dec.com [16.1.0.2] Archive-directory: /pub/DEC/Modula-3 Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) You can obtain information on Modula-3 (the Report as well as a compiler that produces reasonably portable C code for Modula-3 programs; this compiler has been made to run on a number of popular machines) from gatekeeper.dec.com via anonymous FTP. Look under the pub tree and you'll find it. Note the license agreement; it is liberable, but you should check its terms against your situation. Modula-3 is similar to Modula-2, but not precisely an extension. It adds object types in a single inheritance hierarchy, true garbage collection (and an allocate/free mechanism, too), exceptions and handlers, and threads (lightweight concurrent processes in the same address space). It eliminates variant records (object subtypes are nicer) and nested modules, and has a different opaque type mechanism, integrated with object types. We are working on a quality optimizing compiler for it, based on gcc, to be offered for public consumption through the Free Software Foundation under the terms of the GNU Public License. It should be ready sometime in 1991. Oberon adds extensible records to Modula-2, but I understand Oberon to be more of an effort to make a "minimal" language, whereas Modula-3 did not try to strip down to minimal features and caters a bit more to convenience and systems programming. (This is necessarily an opinion; I prefer M3, but there are those who prefer Oberon.) Perhaps someone else will post a resposne indicating where to learn more about Oberon. -- J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor Department of Computer and Information Science Lederle Graduate Research Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu