It has been suggested that ALGOL object code be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

ALGOL (short for ALGOrithmic Language) is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which became the de facto standard way to report algorithms in print for almost the next 30 years. It was designed to avoid some of the perceived problems with FORTRAN and eventually gave rise to many other programming languages (including Pascal). ALGOL uses bracketed statement blocks and was the first language to use begin end pairs for delimiting them. Fragments of ALGOL-like syntax are sometimes still used as a notation for algorithms, so-called Pidgin Algol. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... ALGOL Object Code was a simple and compact and stack-based instruction set architecture mainly used in teaching compiler construction. ... Algol may mean: Algol, a star system Algol, a place in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. ... In computer science, imperative programming, as opposed to declarative programming, is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of a program state and statements that change the program state. ... Computer programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of writing, testing, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. ... A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ... Flowcharts are often used to represent algorithms. ... Fortran (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose[2], procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. ... Pascal is a structured imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... In computer science, Pidgin Algol refers to an informal notation that blends syntax taken from an ALGOL-like programming language with some other mathematical notation, such as that of set theory. ...

There are three official main branches of ALGOL family:

• ALGOL 58 - originally known as the IAL (for International Algorithmic Language.)
• ALGOL 60 - revised 1963 ^[1]
• ALGOL 68 - revised 1973 ^[2]

Niklaus Wirth based his own Algol-W on ALGOL 60, before moving to develop Pascal. Algol-W was intended to be the next generation ALGOL, but the ALGOL 68 committee decided on a design that was more complex and advanced rather than a cleaned, simplified ALGOL 60. The official ALGOL versions are named after the year they were first published. ALGOL 58 is the first language in the ALGOL programming language family. ... ALGOL 68 (short for ALGOrithmic Language 1968) is an imperative computer programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and a more rigorously defined syntax and semantics. ... Niklaus E. Wirth (born February 15, 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. ... Algol-W is a programming language. ...

Note: Throughout its effective life, the name of the programming language ALGOL was always presented in all-uppercase letters, and this is the practice adopted here.

History

ALGOL was developed jointly by a committee of European and American computer scientists in a meeting in 1958 at ETH Zurich. It specified three different syntaxes: a reference syntax, a publication syntax, and an implementation syntax. The different syntaxes permitted it to use different keyword names and conventions for decimal points (commas vs. periods) for different languages. The ETH Zurich, often called Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is a science and technology university in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. ...

ALGOL was used mostly by research computer scientists in the United States and in Europe. Its use in commercial applications was hindered by the absence of standard input/output facilities in its description and the lack of interest in the language by large computer vendors. ALGOL 60 did however become the standard for the publication of algorithms and had a profound effect on future language development.

John Backus developed the Backus normal form method of describing programming languages specifically for ALGOL 58. It was revised and expanded by Peter Naur for ALGOL 60, and at the suggestion by Donald Knuth ^[3] renamed to Backus-Naur form. John Backus (born December 3, 1924) is an American computer scientist, notable as the inventor of the first high-level programming language (FORTRAN), the Backus-Naur form (BNF, the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax), and the concept of Function-level programming. ... The Backus-Naur form (BNF) (also known as Backus normal form) is a metasyntax used to express context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe formal languages. ... Portrait of Peter Naur taken 1968, courtesy of Robert M. McClure. ... Donald Ervin Knuth ( or Ka-NOOTH[1], Chinese: [2]) (b. ... The Backus-Naur form (BNF) (also known as Backus normal form) is a metasyntax used to express context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe formal languages. ...

Peter Naur: "As editor of the ALGOL Bulletin I was drawn into the international discussions of the language, and was selected to be member of the European language design group in November 1959. In this capacity I was the editor of the ALGOL 60 report, produced as the result of the ALGOL 60 meeting in Paris in January 1960."
The following people attended the meeting in Paris:

• Friedrich L. Bauer, Peter Naur, Heinz Rutishauser, Klaus Samelson, Bernard Vauquois, Adriaan van Wijngaarden, and Michael Woodger (from Europe)
• John W. Backus, Julien Green, Charles Katz, John McCarthy, Alan J. Perlis, and Joseph Henry Wegstein (from the USA).

Alan Perlis gave a vivid description of the meeting: “The meetings were exhausting, interminable, and exhilarating. One became aggravated when one’s good ideas were discarded along with the bad ones of others. Nevertheless, diligence persisted during the entire period. The chemistry of the 13 was excellent.”
Both John Backus and Peter Naur served on the committee which created ALGOL 60, as did Wally Feurzeig who later created Logo. Friedrich Ludwig Bauer (born June 10, 1924 in Regensburg) is a German computer scientist and professor emeritus at Munich University of Technology. ... Portrait of Peter Naur taken 1968, courtesy of Robert M. McClure. ... Adriaan van Wijngaarden (2 November 1916 - 7 February 1987) was an outstanding computer scientist who is considered by many to have been the founding father of informatica (computer science) in the Netherlands. ... John Backus (born December 3, 1924) is an American computer scientist, notable as the inventor of the first high-level programming language (FORTRAN), the Backus-Naur form (BNF, the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax), and the concept of Function-level programming. ... John McCarthy (born September 4, 1927, in Boston, Massachusetts, sometimes known affectionately as Uncle John McCarthy), is a prominent computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence. ... Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 - February 7, 1990) was a prominent U.S. computer scientist. ... Wally Feurzeig is an inventor of the LOGO programming language, and a well-known researcher in Artificial Intelligence. ... Logo turtle graphic The Logo programming language is a functional programming language. ...

ALGOL 60 inspired many languages that followed it; C.A.R. Hoare’s original quote on this is recalled in the aphorism: “Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors”^[4]. Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (Tony Hoare or C.A.R. Hoare, born January 11, 1934) is a British computer scientist, probably best known for the development of Quicksort, the worlds most widely used sorting algorithm, and perhaps even the worlds most widely used algorithm of any kind... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

True ALGOL 60s specification and implementation timeline

There were about 70 augmented, extensions, derivations and sublanguages of Algol 60[1]

The Burroughs large systems are stack machines designed to be programmed in an extended variant of ALGOL 60, known as Elliott ALGOL; indeed their operating system the MCP, was written in Elliott ALGOL as far back as 1961. The Unisys Corporation still markets machines in this family today, running the MCP and supporting a diverse set of Elliott ALGOL compilers. Elliott ALGOL (also known simply as Extended ALGOL) was the Burroughs-specific extension of the ALGOL 60 programming language designed system and application programming in its B5000 mainframes. ... Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (Tony Hoare or C.A.R. Hoare, born January 11, 1934) is a British computer scientist, probably best known for the development of Quicksort, the worlds most widely used sorting algorithm, in 1960. ... Turing may refer to: Alan Turing Turing (programming language) Turing (cipher) Turing machine Turing completeness Turing test Reverse Turing test Turing Award Turing Police Church-Turing thesis TURing interface Turing (novel), by Christos Papadimitrou, published in 2003 Turing Scholars Category: ... Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. ... The UNIVAC 1107 was the first member of Sperry Rands UNIVAC 1100 series of computers, introduced in October 1962. ... For other meanings of Odin, Woden or Wotan see Odin (disambiguation), Woden (disambiguation), Wotan (disambiguation). ... PDP-1 at the Computer History Museum. ... Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6, 2002; IPA: ) was a Dutch computer scientist. ... The X1 was a digital computer designed and manufactured in the Netherlands from 1958 to 1965. ... Dartmouth ALGOL 30 was an implementation, firstly of ALGOL 58, then of ALGOL 60 for the LGP-30 at Dartmouth College, hence the name. ... Thomas Eugene Kurtz (born 1928), U.S. computer scientist; co-developed the BASIC programming language in 1963/64, together with John George Kemeny. ... The LGP-30, standing for Librascope General Precision, was an early off the shelf computer manufactured and sold by Royal Precision Electronic Computer Company. ... The ZEBRA (Zeer Eenvoudige Binaire Rekenautomaat or very high-speed calculating machine) was one of the first computers to be manufactured in the Netherlands. ... English Electric logo English Electric was a 20th-century British industrial manufacturer, initially of electric motors, and expanding to include railway locomotives and aviation, before becoming part of GEC. // 1917: Dick, Kerr & Co. ... KDF9 was an early British computer designed and built by English Electric, later English Electric Leo Marconi, EELM, later still incorporated into ICL. It came into service ca. ... META II is a compiler writing language (also known as compiler-compiler) first released in 1962 by D. V. Schorre. ... The term Whetstone can refer to: A London district; see Whetstone, London. ... Brian Randell is a computer scientist, specializing in research in software fault tolerance and dependability. ... English Electric logo English Electric was a 20th-century British industrial manufacturer, initially of electric motors, and expanding to include railway locomotives and aviation, before becoming part of GEC. // 1917: Dick, Kerr & Co. ... PEGASUS was an early thermionic valve (vacuum tube) computer built by Ferranti, Ltd of Great Britain. ... The ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was the first computer designed in Britain; it was designed by Alan Turing in 1946. ... English Electric logo English Electric was a 20th-century British industrial manufacturer, initially of electric motors, and expanding to include railway locomotives and aviation, before becoming part of GEC. // 1917: Dick, Kerr & Co. ... Deuce may refer to: The number two DEUCE, a British commercial computer built by English Electric in the 1950s Deuce (character), a character from the webcomic Jerkcity In sports and card games A playing card with the number two; in most games the lowest-ranked card Deuce-to-seven low... English Electric logo English Electric was a 20th-century British industrial manufacturer, initially of electric motors, and expanding to include railway locomotives and aviation, before becoming part of GEC. // 1917: Dick, Kerr & Co. ... KDF9 was an early British computer designed and built by English Electric, later English Electric Leo Marconi, EELM, later still incorporated into ICL. It came into service ca. ... UNIVAC serves as the catch-all name for the American manufacturers of the lines of mainframe computers by that name, which through mergers and acquisitions underwent numerous name changes. ... Minsk family of mainframe computers was developed and produced in Belarus from 1959 to 1975. ... COBOL (pronounced //) is a third-generation programming language, and one of the oldest programming languages still in active use. ... State motto: Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege (Translated: Workers of the world, unite!) Official language Estonian, Russian (de facto) Capital Tallinn Chairman of the Supreme Council Arnold Rüütel (at the time of regaining independence) Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until July 21, 1940 August 6, 1940 August 20, 1991... Minsk family of mainframe computers was developed and produced in Belarus from 1959 to 1975. ... A Soviet poster reading COMECON: Unity of Goals, Unity of Action The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON / Comecon / CMEA / CEMA), 1949 – 1991, was an economic organization of communist states and a kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent to—but more inclusive than—the European Economic Community. ... Minsk family of mainframe computers was developed and produced in Belarus from 1959 to 1975. ... ES EVM (ЕС ЭВМ) was a Soviet clone of IBMs System/360 computer. ... BESM BESM (БЭСМ) is the name of a series of Russian mainframe computers. ... For the anti-commercial interest group, see Zero artistic movement. ... Portrait of Peter Naur taken 1968, courtesy of Robert M. McClure. ... Simula is a programming language developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Centre in Oslo, primarily by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. ... Professor emeritus Ole-Johan Dahl (October 12, 1931 – June 29, 2002) was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard. ... Kristen Nygaard Kristen Nygaard (August 27, 1926 - August 10, 2002) was a Norwegian mathematician, computer programming language pioneer and politician. ... The UNIVAC 1107 was the first member of Sperry Rands UNIVAC 1100 series of computers, introduced in October 1962. ... The Data General Eclipse line of computers by Data General were 16-bit minicomputers released in early 1974. ... The Burroughs large systems were the largest of three series of Burroughs Corporation mainframe computers. ... In computer science, a stack machine is a model of computation in which the computers memory takes the form of a stack. ... Elliott ALGOL (also known simply as Extended ALGOL) was the Burroughs-specific extension of the ALGOL 60 programming language designed system and application programming in its B5000 mainframes. ... It has been suggested that Maintenance OS be merged into this article or section. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS), based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware[2], is a global provider of information technology services and solutions. ...

Properties

ALGOL 60 as officially defined had no I/O facilities; implementations defined their own in ways that were rarely compatible with each other. In contrast, ALGOL 68 offered an extensive library of transput (ALGOL 68 parlance for Input/Output) facilities.

ALGOL 60 allowed for two evaluation strategies for parameter passing: the common call-by-value, and call-by-name. Call-by-name had certain limitations in contrast to call-by-reference, making it an undesirable feature in imperative language design. For example, it is impossible in ALGOL 60 to develop a procedure that will swap the values of two parameters if the actual parameters that are passed in are an integer variable and an array that is indexed by that same integer variable^{[citation needed]}. However, call-by-name is still beloved of ALGOL implementors for the interesting “thunks” that are used to implement it. Donald Knuth devised the “Man or boy test” to separate compilers that correctly implemented "recursion and non-local references". This test contains an example of call-by-name. In computer science, an evaluation strategy is a set of (usually deterministic) rules for determining the evaluation of expressions in a programming language. ... A parameter is a variable which can be accepted by a subroutine. ... The term thunk is a contrived word from computer science, and has no known root. ... Donald Ervin Knuth ( or Ka-NOOTH[1], Chinese: [2]) (b. ... The man or boy test was proposed by computer scientist Donald Knuth as a means of evaluating implementations of the ALGOL 60 programming language. ...

ALGOL 68 was defined using a two-level grammar formalism invented by Adriaan van Wijngaarden and which bears his name. Van Wijngaarden grammars use a context-free grammar to generate an infinite set of productions that will recognize a particular ALGOL 68 program; notably, they are able to express the kind of requirements that in many other programming language standards are labelled “semantics” and have to be expressed in ambiguity-prone natural language prose, and then implemented in compilers as ad hoc code attached to the formal language parser. Adriaan van Wijngaarden (2 November 1916 - 7 February 1987) was an outstanding computer scientist who is considered by many to have been the founding father of informatica (computer science) in the Netherlands. ... A Van Wijngaarden grammar, vW-grammar or W-grammar, is a two-level grammar which provides a technique to define potentially infinite grammars in a finite number of rules. ... In linguistics and computer science, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a formal grammar in which every production rule is of the form V → w where V is a nonterminal symbol and w is a string consisting of terminals and/or non-terminals. ...

Code sample (ALGOL 60)

(The way the bolded text has to be written depends on the implementation, e.g. 'INTEGER' (including the quotation marks) for integer.)

 procedure Absmax(a) Size:(n, m) Result:(y) Subscripts:(i, k); value n, m; array a; integer n, m, i, k; real y; comment The absolute greatest element of the matrix a, of size n by m is transferred to y, and the subscripts of this element to i and k; begin integer p, q; y := 0; i := k := 1; for p:=1 step 1 until n do for q:=1 step 1 until m do if abs(a[p, q]) > y then begin y := abs(a[p, q]); i := p; k := q end end Absmax 

Here’s an example of how to produce a table using Elliott 803 ALGOL^[5]. .

 FLOATING POINT ALGOL TEST' BEGIN REAL A,B,C,D' READ D' FOR A:= 0.0 STEP D UNTIL 6.3 DO BEGIN PRINT PUNCH(3),££L??' B := SIN(A)' C := COS(A)' PRINT PUNCH(3),SAMELINE,ALIGNED(1,6),A,B,C' END' END' 

PUNCH(3) sends output to the teleprinter rather than the tape punch.
SAMELINE suppresses the carriage return + line feed normally printed between arguments.
ALIGNED(1,6) controls the format of the output with 1 digit before and 6 after the decimal point.

Timeline: Hello world

The variations and lack of portability of the programs from one implementation to another is easily demonstrated by the classic hello world program. A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, World! on a display device. ...

ALGOL 58 (IAL)

ALGOL 58 had no I/O facilities ALGOL 58 is the first language in the ALGOL programming language family. ...

ALGOL 60 family

Since ALGOL 60 had no I/O facilities, there is no portable “Hello world” program in ALGOL. The following program could (and still will) compile and run on an ALGOL implementation for a Unisys A-Series mainframe, and is a straightforward simplification of code taken from this site. A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, World! on a display device. ...

 BEGIN FILE F(KIND=REMOTE); EBCDIC ARRAY E[0:11]; REPLACE E BY "HELLO WORLD!"; WRITE(F, *, E); END. 

An alternative example, using Elliott Algol I/O is as follows. Elliott Algol used different characters for ‘open-string-quote’ and ‘close-string-quote’, represented here by ‘ and ’.

 program HiFolks; begin print ‘Hello world’; end; 

Here’s a version for the Elliott 803 Algol (A104) The standard Elliott 803 used 5 hole paper tape and thus only had upper case. The code lacked any quote characters so £ (UK Pound Sign) was used for open quote and ? (Question Mark) for close quote. Special sequences were placed in double quotes (e.g. ££L?? produced a new line on the teleprinter).

 HIFOLKS’ BEGIN PRINT £HELLO WORLD££L??’ END’ 

The ICL 1900 Algol I/O version allowed input from paper tape or punched card. Paper tape 'full' mode allowed lower case. Output was to a line printer.

 'BEGIN' 'WRITE TEXT'("HELLO WORLD"); 'END' 

ALGOL 68

Main article: Algol 68

In the language of the "Algol 68 Report", Input/output facilities were collectively called the "Transput". ALGOL 68 (short for ALGOrithmic Language 1968) is an imperative computer programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and a more rigorously defined syntax and semantics. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

ALGOL 68 code was published reserved words were typically lowercase, but bolded or underlined.

 begin print(("Hello, world!",newline)) end 

OR using a specific transput channel:

 begin putf((stand out,$gl$,"Hello, world!")) end 

For ease of programming on the 7-bit computers of the time there were "official" methods to "BOLD" reserved words, for example, by using uppercase:

 BEGIN print(("Hello, world!",newline)) END 

Programmers were sometimes required to totally "THINK IN UPPERCASE" on computers that only had 6-bit characters, eg the CDC "super computers". In this case the above code would be written: Control Data Corporation, or CDC, was one of the pioneering supercomputer firms. ... For other uses, see Supercomputer (disambiguation). ...

 'BEGIN' PRINT(("HELLO, WORLD!",NEWLINE)) 'END' 

The "Algol 68 Report" was translated into Russian, German, French and Bulgarian, and allowed programming in languages with larger character sets, eg Cyrillic alphabet. eg the Russian BESM-4. This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... BESM BESM (БЭСМ) is the name of a series of Russian mainframe computers. ...

 BEGIN print(("Здравствуй, мир!",newline)) END 

Note: The 1964 Russian standard GOST 10859 allowed the encoding of 4-bit, 5-bit, 6-bit and 7-bit characters in ALGOL ^[6]. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Gosstandart. ...

ALGOL 60 Reserved words and restricted identifiers

There are 35 such reserved words in the standard Burroughs large systems sub-language: ALPHA, ARRAY, BEGIN, BOOLEAN, COMMENT, CONTINUE, DIRECT, DO, DOUBLE, ELSE, END, EVENT, FALSE, FILE, FOR, FORMAT, GO, IF, INTEGER, LABEL, LIST, LONG, OWN, POINTER, PROCEDURE, REAL, STEP, SWITCH, TASK, THEN, TRUE, UNTIL, VALUE, WHILE, ZIP. The Burroughs large systems were the largest of three series of Burroughs Corporation mainframe computers. ...

There are 71 such restricted identifiers in the standard Burroughs large systems sub-language: ACCEPT, AND, ATTACH, BY, CALL, CASE, CAUSE, CLOSE, DEALLOCATE, DEFINE, DETACH, DISABLE, DISPLAY, DIV, DUMP, ENABLE, EQL, EQV, EXCHANGE, EXTERNAL, FILL, FORWARD, GEQ, GTR, IMP, IN, INTERRUPT, IS, LB, LEQ, LIBERATE, LINE, LOCK, LSS, MERGE, MOD, MONITOR, MUX, NEQ, NO, NOT, ON, OPEN, OR, OUT, PICTURE, PROCESS, PROCURE, PROGRAMDUMP, RB, READ, RELEASE, REPLACE, RESET, RESIZE, REWIND, RUN, SCAN, SEEK, SET, SKIP, SORT, SPACE, SWAP, THRU, TIMES, TO, WAIT, WHEN, WITH, WRITE and also the names of all the intrinsic functions. The Burroughs large systems were the largest of three series of Burroughs Corporation mainframe computers. ...

See also

• ALGOL 68
• Atlas Autocode
• CORAL66
• Edinburgh IMP
• Jensen's Device
• JOVIAL
• Simula

ALGOL 68 (short for ALGOrithmic Language 1968) is an imperative computer programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and a more rigorously defined syntax and semantics. ... Atlas Autocode (AA) was a programming language developed at Manchester University for the Atlas Computer. ... CORAL (Computing Online Realtime Algorithmic Language) was developed in 1966 at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE), Malvern, UK by I. F. Currie and M. Griffiths. ... Edinburgh IMP is a development of ATLAS Autocode, initially developed around 1966-1969 at Edinburgh University, Scotland. ... Jensens Device is a computer programming technique devised by Danish computer scientist Jørn Jensen after studying the ALGOL 60 Report. ... JOVIAL stands for The International Algorithmic Language part of the name is from ALGOL. This high order language was developed to write software for the embedded systems of military aircraft by Jules Schwartz in 1959. ... Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. ...

Notes

1. ^ Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60 (1963). Retrieved on Jun 8, 2007.
2. ^ Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68 (1973). Retrieved on Jun 8, 2007.
3. ^ Knuth, Donald E. (1964) Backus Normal Form vs. Backus Naur Form. Communications of the ACM 7(12):735-736
4. ^ “Hints on Programming Language Design”, C.A.R. Hoare, December 1973. Page 27. (This statement is sometimes erroneously attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, also involved in implementing the first ALGOL 60 compiler.)
5. ^ “803 ALGOL” The manual for Elliott 803 ALGOL
6. ^ GOST 10859 standard. Retrieved on Jun 5, 2007.

Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6, 2002; IPA: ) was a Dutch computer scientist. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ...

References

• B. Randell and L.J. Russell, ALGOL 60 Implementation: The Translation and Use of ALGOL 60 Programs on a Computer. Academic Press, 1964. The design of the Whetstone Compiler. One of the early published descriptions of implementing a compiler. See the related papers: Whetstone Algol Revisited, and The Whetstone KDF9 Algol Translator by B. Randell
• E. W, Dijkstra, Algol 60 translation: an algol 60 translator for the x1 and making a translator for algol 60, report MR 35/61. Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1961. [2]

A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ...

External links

• Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60 by Peter Naur, et al. ALGOL definition
• A BNF syntax summary of ALGOL 60
• “The Emperor’s Old Clothes” – Hoare’s 1980 ACM Turing Award speech, which discusses ALGOL history and his involvement
• MARST, a free Algol-to-C translator
• AN IMPLEMENTATION OF ALGOL 60 FOR THE FP6000 Discussion of some implementation issues.
• “The European Side of the Last Phase of the Development of ALGOL 60” by Peter Naur
• Edinburgh University wrote compilers for Algol60 (later updated for Algol60M) based on their Atlas Autocode compilers initially bootstrapped from the Atlas to the KDF-9. The Edinburgh compilers generated code for the ICL1900, the ICL4/75 (an IBM360 clone), and the ICL2900. Here is the BNF for Algol60 and the ICL2900 compiler source, library documentation, and a considerable test suite including Brian Wichmann’s tests. Also there is a rather superficial Algol60 to Atlas Autocode source-level translator.
• Eric Raymond's Retrocomputing Museum, among others a link to the NASE Algol-60 interpreter written in C.