Re: Enumerated data types

corbett@lupa.Eng.Sun.COM (Robert Corbett)
29 Aug 90 02:50:24 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[3 earlier articles]
Re: Enumerated data types dik@cwi.nl (1990-08-24)
Re: Enumerated data types ok@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (1990-08-27)
Re: Enumerated data types jejones@microware.com (1990-08-27)
Re: Enumerated data types perelgut@turing.toronto.edu (1990-08-24)
Re: Enumerated data types dik@cwi.nl (1990-08-27)
Re: Enumerated data types grover@brahmand.Eng.Sun.COM (1990-08-28)
Re: Enumerated data types corbett@lupa.Eng.Sun.COM (1990-08-29)
Re: Enumerated data types pjj@cs.man.ac.uk (Pete Jinks) (1990-08-29)
Re: Enumerated data types kurt@tc.fluke.COM (1990-08-29)
Re: Enumerated data types anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (1990-08-29)
| List of all articles for this month |

Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: corbett@lupa.Eng.Sun.COM (Robert Corbett)
Keywords: C, Pascal, design, Algol68
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
References: <1990Aug23.134826.2865@forwiss.uni-passau.de> <3621@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <141425@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 29 Aug 90 02:50:24 GMT



In article <141425@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> grover@brahmand.Eng.Sun.COM (Vinod Grover) writes:
>In article <3621@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>>Algol 68 was the first language I met that allowed overloading, but from
>>the published discussions of the Algol 68 committee overloading was already
>>a well known idea then. Anyone know where it first showed up? ...


>I believe that Christopher Strachey used the term "ad hoc polymorphism" to
>refer to a breed of overloading. I *think* that was before Algol 68.


>Vinod Grover
---


Many languages that supported overloading were designed before ALGOL 68.
MAD supported user-defined operator overloading. The operators were
defined by giving assembly code for their implementation. Aad van
Wijgaarden's paper "a Generalization of ALGOL" described a language that
supported overloading through user-defined rewriting rules. The form of
overloading provided in ALGOL 68 pales by comparison.


During the early development of ALGOL 68, the ALGOL committee planned to
produce two languages, ALGOL X and ALGOL Y. ALGOL X was to be a small
change to ALGOL 60 to fix its few remaining bugs. ALGOL Y was to be the
long-term solution. ALGOL X originally did not support extensibility.
Eventually, the ALGOL committee decided to retrofit retrofit some of the
advanced features from ALGOL Y to ALGOL X.


Yours truly,
Bob Corbett
--


Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.