ALGOL 60

Description

Historically important programming language, descendants include Pascal, C, C++, Modula-2, BCPL, PL/I, Oberon, Java, Simula and Smalltalk. Initially introduced in 1958 as IAL with the name changed to ALGOL in 1968, but that variant is now usually known as Algol-58, it drew its inspiration from the work of Heinz Rutishauser on algorithmic programming and the languages IT, Plankalkül and FORTRAN.

Algol-W

By now mostly forgotten, but at the time a superior implementation of ALGOL available for the IBM System 360 and based on the earlier Euler Algol variant. Source code for the Stanford distribution can be found here

Algol 68

Pretty much the only variant of the language that sees any use these days, and is in fact seeing something of a mini-renaissance. Algol-68 reached a surprising popularity in Holland with the universities there refusing to buy computer systems that did not support the language in the 70's. There is at the least one very good implementation for 32 bit OS/2 showed up in the form of OCCL Algol 68.

Other variations of the language include the Japanese ALGOL-N a simplified subset of Algol-68 that was quite popular in Asia in the 1970's in particular on Japanese computer hardware.

A list of OS/2 implementations of Algol

• OCCL Algol 68 - Commercial - Discontinued

A list of DOS implementations of Algol

• RHA Algol-60 - Freeware - Discontinued - Includes source but is nota bene not open source.
• Algol Applications Ltd MK2 Algol-68 - Freeware - Discontinued

Generic or cross platform source code

• A library of multigrid routines - For Algol 68 - By P. W. Hemker and P. M. de Zeeuw.
• A library of Euler multigrid routines - For Algol 68 - By P. W. Hemker and P. M. de Zeeuw.

Publications

• C. H. Lindsey and S. G. van der Meulen: Informal Introduction to ALGOL 68 Revised Edition - 1980 revised editon - PDF file

External articles

• Mikhail A. Bulyonkov, Alexandre F. Rar, Andrey N. Terekhov: Algol 68 – 25 Years in the USSR

Standards

• Original Algol 60 proposal by Peter Naur of BNF fame, a printed version from the AM Newsletter and a German translation prepared and originally published in East Germany.
• Burroughs had an Algol superset called Extended Algol or Burroughs Extended Algol and was used by the company for most programming work for the next decade and was a sort of a minor de facto standard as some other compiler writers took from that implementation, the company had previously used Algol 58 supersets.
• ECMA-02 - Subset of ALGOL 60 - ECMALGOL - 1965 - Withdrawn.
• ECMA TR-01 - A Set of I/O Procedures for ECMALGOL - 1967 - Withdrawn
• ALGOL-N - Formal spec in an English translation put forward by S. Igarashi, T. Iwamura, K. Sakuma, T. Simauti, T. Simuzu, S. Takasu, E. Wada, and N. Yoneda.
• Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 68 - 1976 - Edited by A. van Wijngaarden, B.J. Mailloux, J.E.L. Peck, C.H.A. Koster, M. Sintzoff, C.H. Lindsey, L.G.T. Meertens and R.G.Fisker - The report that most later international standards are based on.

Algol history

• Initially evolved out of a number of ideas, but the first proposal was made by Heinz Rutishauser in his paper Automatische Rechenplanfortigung bei Programingesteurten Rechenmaschinen in 1951, also available in an English translation. Most of the work made in making Algol a reality was done by the "Zűrich, Mainz, Műnchen, Darmstadt" group, or ZMMD that both had say on the Algol 58 standard and adapted their existing Algorithmic Compiler to the language in 1958.