[COFF] Re: Of PL/I

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 11:23 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> Has there ever been a full implementation of PL/I?

Well all of the IBM, GE/Honeywell and DEC compilers were certified.
Bob Freiburghouse
(who was part of the Multics compiler if I understand this right), created
a firm in Mass that built a number of commercial compilers for  a number of
folks, with PL/1 being their prime.  In fact when DEC bought the PL/1
front-end from them (which was in PL/1 of course), Culter and team wrote
the VAX back-end, they had to cross-compile in Cambridge (I think at MIT)
and bring the assembler source back to ZKO in Nashua to assemble and test.



>   It seems akin to solving the halting problem...
>
No more than Algol-68 and many modern languages.

>
> Yes, I've used PL/I in my CompSci days, and was told that IBM had
> trademarked everything from /I to /C :-)
>
I think that is more like an urban legend and IBM's notorious marketing
behavior since Gary Kidall (who was originally a compiler guy) created PL/M
for the 8080 and sold it to Intel.

>
> -- Dave, who loved PL/360
>
Yeah - it might have been Nicklaus Wirth's best language.  I still have
the Standford manuals, but I can not say I have seen a working compiler
since the late 1970s :-)
ᐧ

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