[Oberon] Pascal History (was: Integer subranges)

[Chris Burrows]

There are some more historical Pascal-related goodies here Including the
source code of the CDC Pascal compiler dated Nov 1972.

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/eth/pascal/

The Pascal User's Group / Pascal Newsletters from Jan 1974 to Nov 1983 also
provide a good historical record of the progress of Pascal activities at the
time.

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/pascalNews/

I used the CDC 6000 Pascal compiler as part of my job as an application
programmer in the Sydney University Computing Centre in the late 70's. One
of my responsibilities was to support the distribution of the Pascal-P
Compiler (on 1200 / 2400 ft magnetic tape reels) to Universities in the
Southern Hemisphere.

Cheers,
Chris 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dave at brownsmeet.com [mailto:dave at brownsmeet.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 5 May 2020 2:01 AM
> To: chris at cfbsoftware.com; ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Integer subranges
> 
> Thanks Chris, and my apologies to Urs Ammann.
> 
> There's some history of Pascal 6000 at the end of
> 
> http://www.standardpascal.org/Compiler_text_1984/P6K_INT_REF.TXT
> 
> which explains that Svend Knudsen worked with Urs Ammann on release 2 of
> Pascal-6000 around 1976.
> 
> I supported that compiler at Imperial College from 1978 to 1983 and for
some
> reason it is Knudsen's name that always comes to my mind.
> 
> I found the Ammann paper on code generation fascinating. There is also an
> earlier paper from Wirth published at Stanford called
> 
>    On "Pascal", code generation, and the CDC 6000 computer.
> 
> STAN-CS-72-257 February 1972.
> 
> -- Dave.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2020-05-03 01:51, Chris Burrows wrote:
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> >> dave at brownsmeet.com
> >> Sent: Sunday, 3 May 2020 1:37 AM
> >> To: Joerg
> >> Cc: ETH Oberon and related systems
> >> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Negative integer literals in Oberon
> >>
> >> So to put the cat amongst the pigeons again :-), I have seen no
> >> better solution to multiple integer sizes than Wirth and Knudsen's
> >> original Pascal 6000 compiler (circa 1975) and its support for
> >> integer subranges.
> >>
> >
> > In the interest of historical accuracy, and to help anybody who wishes
> > to research further, my understanding is that that the author of the
> > (circa 1975) CDC 6000 Pascal compiler was Urs Ammann. He documents it
> > in his paper 'On Code Generation in a PASCAL Compiler' (ETH Technical
> > Report TR 013). He is also one of the authors of 'The PASCAL <P>
> > Compiler: Implementation Notes' (ETH Technical Report TR 010).
> >
> > Both of these papers and an additional chapter, 'The Zurich
> > Implementation' written by Urs are included in the book 'PASCAL The
> > Language and its Implementation' Edited by D.W. Barron. 1981 John
> > Wiley and Sons. ISBN-10: 0471278351. Used copies are currently being
> > advertised on Amazon,
> >
> > Svend Erik Knudsen's claim to fame was the development of the Medos
> > operating system written in Modula-2. This is documented in his 1983
> > Dissertation ETH No.7346 'Medos-2: A Modula-2 Oriented Operating
> > System for the Personal Computer Lilith'.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Chris Burrows
> > CFB Software
> > https://www.astrobe.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related
> > systems https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon