[cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows

On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott 803 which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the first commercial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world extensions like PRINT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }. And no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an apostrophe (or single quote), and things like >= were GREQ, LESSEQ or what-have-you. * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and ** was exponent. Remember that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol was common, as well as single character >= <= and != - if you had a fancy enough terminal! DIV was divide (I don't think there was a '/' available anyway) The worst was the open and close quote characters around strings, which were replaced by £ (pound sign) and ? (question mark). I'm going from memory here, but this is something close to what I mean: |PRINT THE 5* TABLE' BEGIN INTEGER I, P' SWITCH SS := L1; I := 1' L1: P := I * 5' PRINT £5 * ?, I, £=?, P' I = I + 1' IF I LESSEQ 12 THEN GOTO L1' END'| Because it looked so different to any other Algol I assumed it was Algol 58, until Tony Hoare (the author) corrected me that it was Algol 60 when I said how much I'd admired it about 35 years later. Embarrassing! There was an Algol 68 compiler released with the Research Machines 380Z, and S-100 CP/M machine used in universities (and schools) in England as the government approved computer.