Edinburgh IMP is a development of ATLAS Autocode, initially developed around 1966-1969 at Edinburgh University, Scotland. IMP was a general-purpose programming language which was used heavily for systems programming. Atlas Autocode (AA) was a programming language developed at Manchester University for the Atlas Computer. ... The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1583 as a renowned centre for teaching in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (Latin: No one provokes me with impunity) (Scots: Wha daur meddle wi me) Scotlands location within the UK Languages with Official Status1 English Gaelic Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... General-purpose programming language or General purpose Softwares refers to a type software that is suitable for most ordinary computer applications. ... System programming (or systems programming) is the activity of building and maintaining, low-level, system software for computers, including operating systems, system utilities, compilers, and so forth. ...

Expressively, IMP is extremely similar to Algol and includes all the Algol-style block structure, reserved keywords, and datatypes such as arrays and records. It adds to Algol-style languages a string type (akin to a flex array of char) and built-in operators for string manipulation and character handling. In the mathematical discipline of matrix theory, a block matrix or a partitioned matrix is a partition of a matrix into rectangular smaller matrices called blocks. ... In computer science, a keyword is an identifier which indicates a specific command. ... In computer science, a datatype (often simply type) is a name or label for a set of values and some operations which can be performed on that set of values. ...

IMP provides significant control over the storage mapping of data, plus commands for addressing within parts of words. Most Imp compilers offer compiler-generated run-time checks and a backtrace facility by default, even in production code. IMP allows the programmer to inline machine language instructions in the IMP source code. In-line expansion or inlining for short is a compiler optimization which expands a function call site into the actual implementation of the function which is called, rather than each call transferring control to a common piece of code. ... A system of codes directly understandable by a computers CPU is termed this CPUs native or machine language. ...

Early IMP compilers were developed for the ICL System 4, UNIVAC 1108, IBM 360, PDP-9 and PDP-15 computers. IMP was used to implement the EMAS operating system. In later years a version of IMP called IMP77 was developed by Peter Robertson within the Computer Science department at Edinburgh which was a portable compiler that brought IMP to even more platforms. In 2002 the IMP77 language was resurrected by the Edinburgh Computer History Project for Intel x86 hardware running DOS, Windows and Linux and is once again in use by Edinburgh graduates and ex-pats. The UNIVAC 1108 was the second member of Sperry Rands UNIVAC 1100 series of computers, introduced in 1964. ... The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a computer system family announced by International Business Machines on April 7, 1964. ... PDP is also used as an acronym for Plasma Display Panel. ... PDP is also used as an acronym for Plasma Display Panel. ... The Edinburgh Multi-Access System (EMAS) was an operating system developed at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, during the 1970s. ... In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...

The diverged IMP and IMP77 were later consolidated into a single language with the introduction of the IMP80 standard supported by implementations from the Edinburgh Regional Computer Center. IMP80 has also been ported to several platforms including Intel and was actively in use into the 1990's.

Edinburgh IMP is unrelated to the later IMP (programming language) extensible syntax programming language developed by Irons for the CDC 6600, which was the main language used by the NSA for many years. IMP was a systems programming language developed by Irons in the late 1960s through early 1970s. ... The CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first manufactured in 1965. ...

See also

• IMP programming language (contrast)

IMP was a systems programming language developed by Irons in the late 1960s through early 1970s. ...

References

• Barritt, M. M. et al., Edinburgh IMP Language Manual, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Regional Computing Center, July 1970.

External links

• Example Early IMP Program (actually the world's first known self-reproducing program)
• Intel (Windows + Linux) IMP77 Compiler
• Edinburgh IMP Language Manual, Second edition (1974) (Scan) by Roderick McLeod
• The Imp77 Language (Rekeyed 2003)
• Using Imp77
• The Production of Optimised Machine Code for High Level Languages using Machine-Independent Intermediate Codes
• I-Code V1.3 Working Notes
• A short description of some optimisation techniques used in the PDP11 Imp Compiler
• IMP11 User's Guide
• Edinburgh IMP80 Language Manual by Felicity Stephens and John Murison
• Source of first ever IMP compiler for KDF9 by Bratley, Rees, Schofield and Whitfield, 1965
• Source of IMP compiler for PDP9/PDP15 by Hamish Dewar
• Notes on IMP9 Compiler Output by Hamish Dewar
• Skimp MkII compiler by David Rees - used in 3rd year compilers class at Edinburgh University
• Source of IMP compiler for PDP11 bootstrapped via Skimp
• Source of first IMP compiler written entirely in IMP (1970)
• Source of IMP compiler for 68000 platform by Hamish Dewar
• Sources of Imp77 compilers for several platforms by Peter Robertson
• Source of Imp80 compiler for Intel by Peter D Stephens
• Notes on IMP Programming by Peter D Schofield
• Extracts from The IMP Language and Compiler by Peter D Stephens
• IMP80 - A Historical Introduction by Peter D Stephens
• Differences between ERCC IMP on ICL 4/75 and IMP80 on ICL2900 by John M. Murison