The best reference I found for Algol 68 was the Wikipedia page. It
includes (at the end) references to other good sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68


--
James Harris

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On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 20:30:34 +0100, James Harris wrote:

The best reference I found for Algol 68 was the Wikipedia page. It
includes (at the end) references to other good sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68

For both Algol 60 and Algol 68, as well as Wirth's Algol X proposal,
which eventually became Algol W and Pascal, and lots of other Algol
derived languages (MARY!) the Algol Bulletin is a fountain of
contemporary information.

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/algol/algol_bulletin/

I don't remember if it is listed among the references in the WP article,
it probably is. I find that van Wijngaardens original paper on Algol X is
a very inspiring read - https://ir.cwi.nl/pub/9208 - and there's also
this: https://ir.cwi.nl/pub/9227

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/standards/ has a
wealth of information. While searching for the link to van Wijngaardens
paper, I found something I had not read before: http:// archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-5- pdf/k-5-u2456-Rechenplanfortigung-german.pdf which is a reprint from 1961
of a paper by Heinz Rutishauser (ETH Zürich) from 1951? This paper seems
to be the earliest idea of Algol. I haven't read it yet, but one thing I
found interesting while quickly looking through the PDF is that
Rutishauser uses a = with an overprinted > to denote assignment, from
left to right. (And, as the paper is in German, the for statement is a "für-ende" statement.) MARY also used left-to-right assignment, and I had
an encounter with the language BETA as a student back in 1990, which was
a sort of successor to Simula. BETA generalised argument passing and
assignment to a left-to-right pipeline, using "->". Unconventional, and
IMO a somewhat foolish consistency.

/Lasse

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On 12/11/2021 23:14, Lasse Hillerøe Petersen wrote:

For both Algol 60 and Algol 68, [...]

Thanks for that, Lasse! Lots of good references, many of
which I had half-forgotten [or worse]. Sadly, as is the way with
encyclopaedic entries, I also managed to waste a morning chasing
down all those rabbit holes.

One of the rabbit holes that is particularly relevant to
recent threads here was the paper by Hemker and Winter:

Hemker, P.W, & Winter, D.T. (1979). "A preliminary report on
numerical operators in Algol 68." Stichting Mathematisch
Centrum. Numerieke Wiskunde.
http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/dick/Algol68/TransputHansVanVliet

detailing a system of type and operator definitions to allow
numerical analysis in a natural way. The actual content will be
of limited interest to non-mathematicians/engineers, but shows
how useful operators can be. It's worth the doubters looking at
least at the first real page of text ["Introduction for the non-
ALGOL 68 user"] to see what the point is. These days, those with
deep pockets can use Maple [based around A68!] or Mathematica
instead, but good symbolic algebra packages weren't around in the
1970s.

BTW, while browsing, I realise that I have been allowing auto-completion of "Marc" to "Marcus" in recent articles instead
of the much more famous and helpful A68G guru, Marcel vd Veer.
Apologies to him! I thought it looked wrong, but couldn't quite
see how.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Bull

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