Re: Algol history, was specifying semantics

> [As far as I know, the machine readable source was lost.
> Even with a copy of the source, you'll need a copy of PL360, the
> Algol-flavored assembler it was written in. -John]


IMO, PL360 was the best language work that Wirth ever did. It was an
expression assembler, as opposed to a conventional statement
assembler, and was representative of a family of such languages with
different target machines done by different people.


The key idea was the absence of operator precedence; expressions were
executed in strict left-to-right order, with operations for each machine
op and explicit register names for operands:


r5 := r3 + r2 * r1; (PL360)


The target register served as the accumulator for the expression.
[Agreed. Tight, clearly defined, efficient little language.
Princeton let you run small PL360 and AlgolW programs on their
mainframe without having an account when I was in high school. -John]

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