Ada compiler in BASIC?

Ada compiler in BASIC?

[e_erpelding]

I am trying to find the Byte magazine
article about an Ada compiler written
in BASIC. The article included the source
code even! Does anyone know the issue
it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
the net somewhere?

Thanks in advance.


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[tmoran]

> I am trying to find the Byte magazine article about an Ada compiler
> written in BASIC.
  A search of the on-line title indexes for Byte for 1988-94
(byte.index/digest.nn on BIX, nee Byte Information eXchange) doesn't
find any hits on Ada.  The first message in BIX's ada/general forum
apparently is dated 1986, but the content has been scrolled off-line.
I posted a query there.
  You might inquire at RR Software since, I believe, they had the
first or second Ada for PCs and advertised in Byte, so they would
have noticed such an article.
  I don't recall any such article and would be quite surprised if
it existed.

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Charles E. Bortle, Jr.]

Hello,

(The original poster has posted to several ng's)

The original poster may be thinking of a Pascal
to P-Code compiler/interpreter that was written up
in BYTE.  I cannot remember exactly when, though.
It was a multi-part article, and I have one of the issues
(buried in tons of stuff in the garage :-(

As I recall, there was both the compiler and the
P-Code interpreter in BASIC code .  But this was
definatly a Pascal compiler...I don' know if they ever
did an Ada compiler, but if they did Pascal, I imagine
they could have done at least a sub-set Ada?


--
Charles          cbrtjr@ix.netcom.com
"For God So Loved The World, That He Gave His
Only Begotten Son, That Whosoever Believeth
In Him Should Not Perish, But Have Everlasting
Life"John3:16  * http://pw2.netcom.com/~cbrtjr/wrdthing.html *
<tmoran@bix.com> wrote in message
news:7LoK4.1681$lM4.395575@news.pacbell.net...
> > I am trying to find the Byte magazine article about an Ada compiler
> > written in BASIC.
>   A search of the on-line title indexes for Byte for 1988-94
> (byte.index/digest.nn on BIX, nee Byte Information eXchange) doesn't
> find any hits on Ada.  The first message in BIX's ada/general forum
> apparently is dated 1986, but the content has been scrolled off-line.
> I posted a query there.
>   You might inquire at RR Software since, I believe, they had the
> first or second Ada for PCs and advertised in Byte, so they would
> have noticed such an article.
>   I don't recall any such article and would be quite surprised if
> it existed.

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[e_erpelding]

The article I was thinking of appeared in Dr Dobbs Journal,

The "Tiny" Pascal article you mention is this:

Chung Kin-Man and Yuen H (1978): A "Tiny" Pascal Compiler,
Byte Magazine, Volume 3, Numbers 9, 10, 11, September,
October, November 1978.

This looks like a very good article. Those older issue of
Byte magazine are a treasure trove of information.

--EE


In article <8dd7bj$i53$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
  "Charles E. Bortle, Jr." <cbrtjr@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> (The original poster has posted to several ng's)
>
> The original poster may be thinking of a Pascal
> to P-Code compiler/interpreter that was written up
> in BYTE.  I cannot remember exactly when, though.
> It was a multi-part article, and I have one of the issues
> (buried in tons of stuff in the garage :-(
>
> As I recall, there was both the compiler and the
> P-Code interpreter in BASIC code .  But this was
> definatly a Pascal compiler...I don' know if they ever
> did an Ada compiler, but if they did Pascal, I imagine
> they could have done at least a sub-set Ada?
>
> --
> Charles          cbrtjr@ix.netcom.com
> "For God So Loved The World, That He Gave His
> Only Begotten Son, That Whosoever Believeth
> In Him Should Not Perish, But Have Everlasting
> Life"John3:16  * http://pw2.netcom.com/~cbrtjr/wrdthing.html *
> <tmoran@bix.com> wrote in message
> news:7LoK4.1681$lM4.395575@news.pacbell.net...
> > > I am trying to find the Byte magazine article about an Ada
compiler
> > > written in BASIC.
> >   A search of the on-line title indexes for Byte for 1988-94
> > (byte.index/digest.nn on BIX, nee Byte Information eXchange) doesn't
> > find any hits on Ada.  The first message in BIX's ada/general forum
> > apparently is dated 1986, but the content has been scrolled off-
line.
> > I posted a query there.
> >   You might inquire at RR Software since, I believe, they had the
> > first or second Ada for PCs and advertised in Byte, so they would
> > have noticed such an article.
> >   I don't recall any such article and would be quite surprised if
> > it existed.
>
>


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Bjarne Bäckström]

<tmoran@bix.com> wrote:

> > I am trying to find the Byte magazine article about an Ada compiler
> > written in BASIC.
>   A search of the on-line title indexes for Byte for 1988-94
> (byte.index/digest.nn on BIX, nee Byte Information eXchange) doesn't
> find any hits on Ada.  The first message in BIX's ada/general forum
> apparently is dated 1986, but the content has been scrolled off-line.
> I posted a query there.
>   You might inquire at RR Software since, I believe, they had the
> first or second Ada for PCs and advertised in Byte, so they would
> have noticed such an article.
>   I don't recall any such article and would be quite surprised if
> it existed.

   A search on my local disks...found this abstract. :-) If this is the
same compiler, the article actually appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal,
issues 75, 77, 79 and 81 (January to July 1983.) It's a "Tiny Ada"
p-code compiler/interpreter, called "Augusta." There were two sets of
source code, written in Microsoft BASIC and Borland Turbo Pascal.

   The article also mentioned a 160 page book about Augusta, that was
available from Microsystems Inc., 4147 Beethoven Street, Los Angeles,
CA, 90066.

/Bjarne.
  

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[e_erpelding]

Yes! That is the article I was thinking of.
Thanks for doing the search.

What database contained the abstract?

I wonder if the source code is available someplace now?

--EE



In article <20000416223409129159@t4o921p4.telia.com>,
  bjarne.backstrom@telia.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bjarne_B=E4ckstr=F6m?=)
wrote:

<SNIP>

>    A search on my local disks...found this abstract. :-) If this is
the
> same compiler, the article actually appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal,
> issues 75, 77, 79 and 81 (January to July 1983.) It's a "Tiny Ada"
> p-code compiler/interpreter, called "Augusta." There were two sets of
> source code, written in Microsoft BASIC and Borland Turbo Pascal.
>
>    The article also mentioned a 160 page book about Augusta, that was
> available from Microsystems Inc., 4147 Beethoven Street, Los Angeles,
> CA, 90066.
>
> /Bjarne.
>
>


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Bjarne Bäckström]

<e_erpelding@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Yes! That is the article I was thinking of.
> Thanks for doing the search.
> 
> What database contained the abstract?

   It's my private database, that contains everything I've found worth
noting since I began using micros back in the mid seventies... :-)
> 
> I wonder if the source code is available someplace now?
> 
   I have the sources on a backup tape for a retired Unisys machine. The
machine is still going strong, however not on-line, so I'll have to hook
it up to a terminal. Bug me in a private e-mail, if you haven't received
the files within a week or so. (I take it that your e-mail address above
is valid.)

/Bjarne.

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[e_erpelding]

I made a mistake! The article exists, but it is
in Dr Dobbs Journal.

It was written by Edward Mitchell, and was in four parts

Augusta -- an Ada Subset for Micros, Jan. 1983
Augusta -- 2, the Augusta P-Code Interpreter, Mar. 1983
Augusta -- Part III, Recursive Descent Compilers, May 1983
Augusta -- Part IV, the Augusta Compiler (continued), July 1983

Too bad the Dr Dobbs CD doesn't go back to 1983, I will have
to find some library that has the older issues.

--EE

In article <7LoK4.1681$lM4.395575@news.pacbell.net>,
  tmoran@bix.com wrote:
> > I am trying to find the Byte magazine article about an Ada compiler
> > written in BASIC.
>   A search of the on-line title indexes for Byte for 1988-94
> (byte.index/digest.nn on BIX, nee Byte Information eXchange) doesn't
> find any hits on Ada.  The first message in BIX's ada/general forum
> apparently is dated 1986, but the content has been scrolled off-line.
> I posted a query there.
>   You might inquire at RR Software since, I believe, they had the
> first or second Ada for PCs and advertised in Byte, so they would
> have noticed such an article.
>   I don't recall any such article and would be quite surprised if
> it existed.
>


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <8de894$lv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  e_erpelding@hotmail.com wrote:
> I made a mistake! The article exists, but it is
> in Dr Dobbs Journal.
>
> It was written by Edward Mitchell, and was in four parts
>
> Augusta -- an Ada Subset for Micros, Jan. 1983
> Augusta -- 2, the Augusta P-Code Interpreter, Mar. 1983
> Augusta -- Part III, Recursive Descent Compilers, May 1983
> Augusta -- Part IV, the Augusta Compiler (continued), July
1983

The Augusta Ada subset roughly corresponds in complexity to
the kind of project done by graduate students in a typical
graduate compiler course. Some of these projects are very
well done, so I suspect that a solicitation of such projects
might produce some quite interesting Ada subset implementations,
and certainly gallons of Pascal subset implementations (Augusta
is really a Pascal subset done up in Ada syntax).


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  e_erpelding@hotmail.com wrote:
> I am trying to find the Byte magazine
> article about an Ada compiler written
> in BASIC. The article included the source
> code even! Does anyone know the issue
> it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
> the net somewhere?


Hmmm! I would try issues dated April 1st,
that's probably the only hope :-)


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  e_erpelding@hotmail.com wrote:
> I am trying to find the Byte magazine
> article about an Ada compiler written
> in BASIC. The article included the source
> code even! Does anyone know the issue
> it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
> the net somewhere?


It would not be too hard to write an Ada 83
compiler where the maximum line length (an
implementation dependent choice) was 2 :-)


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <8dc7c2$j7f$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> In article <8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   e_erpelding@hotmail.com wrote:
>> I am trying to find the Byte magazine
>> article about an Ada compiler written
>> in BASIC. The article included the source
>> code even! Does anyone know the issue
>> it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
>> the net somewhere?
> 
> 
> It would not be too hard to write an Ada 83
> compiler where the maximum line length (an
> implementation dependent choice) was 2 :-)

Are you proposing an implementation that accepted abbreviations
for some of the longer common Ada words, like "end" ?

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <2000Apr16.192006.1@eisner>,
  Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam wrote:
> > It would not be too hard to write an Ada 83
> > compiler where the maximum line length (an
> > implementation dependent choice) was 2 :-)
>
> Are you proposing an implementation that accepted
> abbreviations for some of the longer common Ada words, like
> "end" ?

No, Ada compilers are not allowed to accept abbreviations.
That's the point, if you make the maximum line length 2, then
no valid programs can be written. All valid programs are
rejected as exceeding the maximum line length. In Ada 83
there were no requirements on maximum line length values,
so such a compiler is technically conformant to the standard :-)


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Pascal Obry]

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e_erpelding@hotmail.com a �crit dans le message
<8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>I am trying to find the Byte magazine
>article about an Ada compiler written
>in BASIC. The article included the source
>code even! Does anyone know the issue
>it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
>the net somewhere?
>
>Thanks in advance.


I would say that this is a joke! I've never heard of such compiler and it
seems almost impossible to do in BASIC. Well maybe a very restricted
set of Ada...

Where did your heard of such compiler ?

Pascal.

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[e_erpelding]

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It is no joke, I saw the article over ten years ago.

Since posting my original message, I have found a
reference to it, it did not appear in Byte magazine,
but Dr Dobbs Journal instead! Both magazine publish
source code, so I got them mixed up.

The article I was thinking of was written by Edward Mitchell,
and appeared in the January, March, May, and July 1983 issues.

The titles were:

Augusta -- an Ada Subset for Micros, Jan. 1983
Augusta -- 2, the Augusta P-Code Interpreter, Mar. 1983
Augusta -- Part III, Recursive Descent Compilers, May 1983
Augusta -- Part IV, the Augusta Compiler (continued), July 1983

One of the references in the Augusta articles did appear in
Byte magazine, and was about a Pascal compiler written in BASIC

Chung Kin-Man and Yuen H (1978): A "Tiny" Pascal Compiler,
Byte Magazine, Volume 3, Numbers 9, 10, 11, September,
October, November 1978.

Now all I have to do is find these article someplace!

--EE




In article <8dbqi1$ej9$1@wanadoo.fr>,
  "Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> e_erpelding@hotmail.com a �crit dans le message
> <8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
> >I am trying to find the Byte magazine
> >article about an Ada compiler written
> >in BASIC. The article included the source
> >code even! Does anyone know the issue
> >it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
> >the net somewhere?
> >
> >Thanks in advance.
>
> I would say that this is a joke! I've never heard of such compiler
and it
> seems almost impossible to do in BASIC. Well maybe a very restricted
> set of Ada...
>
> Where did your heard of such compiler ?
>
> Pascal.
>
> --|------------------------------------------------------
> --| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
> --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
> --|------------------------------------------------------
> --|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
> --|
> --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
>
>


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <8de7tn$lsa$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  e_erpelding@hotmail.com wrote:
> It is no joke, I saw the article over ten years ago.
>
> Since posting my original message, I have found a
> reference to it, it did not appear in Byte magazine,
> but Dr Dobbs Journal instead! Both magazine publish
> source code, so I got them mixed up.
>
> The article I was thinking of was written by Edward Mitchell,
> and appeared in the January, March, May, and July 1983 issues.
>
> The titles were:
>
> Augusta -- an Ada Subset for Micros, Jan. 1983

Well I guess you can call anything an Ada subset, but the
original question was about an Ada compiler, which this is
definitely NOT. It is a compiler for a tiny language with
a syntax that looks like Ada, but which as a language is
really so far from Ada that it is misleading to call it
an Ada subset -- technically correct -- after all a compiler
that accepts no programs at all is technically an Ada subset
compiler -- but not usefully identified as Ada.


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Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Richard D Riehle]

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In article <8dbqi1$ej9$1@wanadoo.fr>,
	"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>
>e_erpelding@hotmail.com a �crit dans le message
><8db57c$g94$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>>I am trying to find the Byte magazine
>>article about an Ada compiler written
>>in BASIC. The article included the source
>>code even! Does anyone know the issue
>>it appeared in? Or, even better, is it on
>>the net somewhere?


I think it was in an early issue of Dr. Dobbs.  Somewhere among
my boxes of old literature, I probably have a copy of the article.
I seem to recall it was a miniAda and not very good at that.  Still,
it was an interesting experiment at the time.

Richard Riehle


>>Thanks in advance.
>
>
>I would say that this is a joke! I've never heard of such compiler and it
>seems almost impossible to do in BASIC. Well maybe a very restricted
>set of Ada...
>
>Where did your heard of such compiler ?
>
>Pascal.
>
>--|------------------------------------------------------
>--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
>--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
>--|------------------------------------------------------
>--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
>--|
>--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
>
>
>
>

 

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[John Herro]

"Richard D Riehle" <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> I think it was in an early issue of Dr. Dobbs.
     You're right.  It was in the January, March, May, and July, 1983 issues
of Dr. Dobbs Journal (issues 75, 77, 79, and 81).  It was a *very* small
subset of Ada - no types defined by the user (no records and no enumeration
types!), no packages, and the non-standard spelling "elseif."  However, it
*was* a good demonstration of hiding; a variable in a subprogram would
properly hide a variable of the same name in its parent.
     It compiled to an intermediate language similar to P-code, which it
then interpreted.  But strangely, the intermediate file had the extension
.COM!  Needless to say, if you typed that file's name without invoking the
interpreter, you crashed the computer.
     Augusta was later translated into Pascal.  I have source in both
GWBasic and Turbo Pascal, in case there are any gluttons for punishment out
there :-)
- John Herro
http://members.aol.com/AdaTutor

Re: Ada compiler in BASIC?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <390f2850$1_1@excalibur.gbmtech.net>,
  "John Herro" <john@prousa.net> wrote:
> "Richard D Riehle" <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > I think it was in an early issue of Dr. Dobbs.
>      You're right.  It was in the January, March, May, and
July, 1983 issues
> of Dr. Dobbs Journal (issues 75, 77, 79, and 81).  It was a
*very* small
> subset of Ada - no types defined by the user (no records and
no enumeration
> types!), no packages, and the non-standard spelling "elseif."
However, it
> *was* a good demonstration of hiding; a variable in a
subprogram would
> properly hide a variable of the same name in its parent.


I am not sure this needs demonstration at this stage, good
or otherwise, seeing as all Algol-60 compilers for the last
forty years have implemented this well defined, and trivial
to implement semantics :-)


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