CPL (programming language): Difference between revisions
→Example: Corrected confusion of opening and closing symbols. |
m →Implementations: Use Citation needed template |
||
| Line 44: | Line 44: | ||
== Implementations == |
== Implementations == |
||
It is thought |
It is thought that CPL was never fully implemented in the 1960s,{{Citation needed|date=February 2018}} existing as a theoretical construct with some research work on partial implementations. |
||
[[Peter Norvig]] has written a simple CPL to Python translator for modern machines (http://norvig.com/sciam/cpl.g). |
[[Peter Norvig]] has written a simple CPL to Python translator for modern machines (http://norvig.com/sciam/cpl.g). |
||
Revision as of 21:04, 18 February 2018
| Paradigm | multi-paradigm: procedural, imperative, structured, functional |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Christopher Strachey et al. |
| First appeared | 1963 |
| Influenced by | |
| ALGOL 60 | |
| Influenced | |
| BCPL, POP-2 | |
CPL (Combined Programming Language) is a multi-paradigm programming language, that was developed in the early 1960s. It is an early ancestor of the C language via the BCPL and B languages.
Design
CPL[1] was developed initially at the Mathematical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge as the "Cambridge Programming Language" and later published jointly between Cambridge and the University of London Computer Unit as the "Combined Programming Language". Christopher Strachey, David Barron and others were involved in its development. (CPL was also nicknamed by some as as "Cambridge Plus London"[2] or "Christopher's Programming Language"). The first paper describing it was published in 1963, while it was being implemented on the Titan Computer at Cambridge and the Atlas Computer at London.
It was heavily influenced by ALGOL 60, but instead of being extremely small, elegant and simple, CPL was intended for a wider application area than scientific calculations and was therefore much more complex and not as elegant as ALGOL 60. CPL was a big language for its time. CPL attempted to go beyond ALGOL to include industrial process control, business data processing and possibly some early command line games. CPL was intended to allow low-level programming and high level abstractions using the same language.
However, CPL was only implemented very slowly. The first CPL compiler was probably written about 1970,[3] but the language never gained much popularity and seems to have disappeared without trace sometime in the 1970s.
BCPL (for "Basic CPL", although originally "Bootstrap CPL"), was a much simpler language based on CPL intended primarily as a systems programming language, particularly for writing compilers; it was first implemented in 1967, prior to CPL's first implementation. BCPL then led, via B, to the popular and influential C programming language.
Example
The function MAX as formulated by Peter Norvig:[3]
Max(Items, ValueFunction) = value of § (Best, BestVal) = (NIL, -∞) while Items do § (Item, Val) = (Head(Items), ValueFunction(Head(Items))) if Val > BestVal then (Best, BestVal) := (Item, Val) Items := Rest(Items) §⃒ result is Best §⃒
(The closing symbol to match the opening symbol "§" is a "§⃒" with a vertical stroke through it. That symbol can be composed in Unicode as "§⃒", which is § (U+00A7, SECTION SIGN) composed with ⃒ (U+20D2, COMBINING LONG VERTICAL LINE OVERLAY), but it may not display correctly on your browser.)
Implementations
It is thought that CPL was never fully implemented in the 1960s,[citation needed] existing as a theoretical construct with some research work on partial implementations.
Peter Norvig has written a simple CPL to Python translator for modern machines (http://norvig.com/sciam/cpl.g).
See also
References
- ^ "The main features of CPL". comjnl.oxfordjournals.org. Retrieved 2015-08-27.
- ^ "Clive Feather on CPL and BCPL". Lysator.liu.se. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
- ^ a b Peter Norvig. "Prescient but Not Perfect: A Look Back at a 1966 Scientific American Article on Systems Analysis". Blogs.scientificamerican.com. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
Bibliography
- Collected papers of Christopher Strachey, section pertaining to CPL, archived at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; CSAC 71.1.80/C.136-C.184
- D. W. Barron, J. N. Buxton, D. F. Hartley, E. Nixon, and C. Strachey. "The main features of CPL" The Computer Journal 6:2:134-143 (1963), available online.
- J. Buxton, J. C. Gray, and D. Park. CPL Elementary Programming Manual, Edition II (Cambridge).
- University of London Institute of Computer Science and The Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge. CPL Working Papers.