From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,52fd60a337c05842 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-18 18:05:56 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!cyclone.tampabay.rr.com!cyclone.austin.rr.com!typhoon.austin.rr.com.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D0FD86A.2040308@houston.rr.com> From: Rod Haper User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020605 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ada paper critic References: <3D0F7605.285CA9D4@acm.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 01:04:22 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.174.117.65 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rr.com X-Trace: typhoon.austin.rr.com 1024448662 24.174.117.65 (Tue, 18 Jun 2002 20:04:22 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 20:04:22 CDT Organization: Road Runner - Texas Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26332 Date: 2002-06-19T01:04:22+00:00 List-Id: Jeffrey Carter wrote: > Robert A Duff wrote: > >>By the way, is it true that Algol 60 and/or Algol 68 was font-sensitive >>(i.e. "reserved words" are distinguished by being in boldface)? > > > I've never used A68, but I knew someone who used it in the early 1980s > who explained that keywords were somehow distinguishable from other > identifiers. In text this difference was boldface, so calling the > difference "font" seems as good as any. In practice, the compiler > required the keywords to be marked somehow to indicate that they were in > the keyword representation. I don't recall the actual details of how > they were marked. Sorry. > > Other things I recall: > > The programmer could declare new infix operators. This seemed like a lot > of work for the programmer, and no doubt for the compiler writer. > > What Ada calls "type" A68 called "mode". I'm not sure what that was > supposed to mean. "Type" seems better, though still not great, since > usually declaring a type in Ada requires more than just the type > declaration. > > These are remarks by an ignorant non-A68 user, so weigh them > appropriately. > Ah, ALGOL 60, now that brings many very fond memories back to mind. I was fortunate enough to have learned ALOGL 60 as my programming "mother tongue" back in the "dark ages" of 1966 on the Burrough's B5500 (a wonderfull machine and more very fond memories). I still have my copy of "a guide to ALGOL programming" by Daniel McCracken, 1962. It uses bold type to distinguish ALGOL reserved words from identifier words although the convention was to underline them which I recall doing in hand-written code. McCracken notes that on some implementations you could use the same name for an identifier as an ALGOL reserved word if the ALGOL reserved word is set off by distinguishing marks such as quotes or dollar signs so that there is no confusion - ala, 'true' and true and $while$ and while. I don't recall ever doing this on the B5500 but the $ sign usage does ring a bell - aleit very faintly after all these years - we almost certainly would have avoided this practice. As for declaring new infix operators, that must have been a part of ALGOL 68 which, saddly, I never had an opportunity to use. -- Rod +----------------------------------+ | There is a better way ... | | LAP => Linux + Ada95 + Python | +----------------------------------+