3 ms·

Here's a table in a 1966 book showing the different keywords across implementations: https://archive.org/details/breuer-dictionary-for-computer-languages/page/n

by hcs 4y ago

Here's a table in a 1966 book showing the different keywords across implementations: https://archive.org/details/breuer-dictionary-for-computer-languages/page/n30/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/breuer-dictionary-for-computer-l... (It uses a weird glyph for NOT that I've never seen elsewhere, probably a limitation of typesetting.) Edit: Interesting to note that the English Electric KDF9's Algol used * at the beginning of all keywords, I suppose that's to simplify parsing, or maybe just to avoid reserving words.

Jtsummers 4y ago
That not symbol looks like a stand-in for ¬. Nearest I can find is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/⁊ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/⁊ (Tironian et). If that is the case it's amusing that it actually means "and".
- ratmice 4y ago
  looks exactly like U+29A2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Mathematical_Symbols-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Mathematical_Sym... Turned angle to me
int_19h 4y ago
Algol-60 didn't actually have the notion of keywords as such in the modern sense. The language grammar treats stuff like "if", "for" etc as fundamental terminal symbols without specifying how they're to be parsed distinctly from identically spelled identifiers. Each representation is supposed to come up with a way to make that distinction; for example, the reference representation uses bolding and/or underlining to distinguish keywords. So, for hardware representations, which are all linear lists of characters without formatting, they had to use some kind of escape sequence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stropping_(syntax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stropping_(syntax). The term itself comes from the most popular syntax for this, which was to put keywords in single quotes / apostrophes, but there were many other variants, including some identical to how we handle keywords today, as seen from this table. This approach also allowed for Algol programs to be "translated" to a language other than English in a sense that a representation could be defined that used native words for keywords. This was actually used to some extent in Europe, and especially in the USSR.

by hcs 4y ago

Jtsummers 4y ago

That not symbol looks like a stand-in for ¬. Nearest I can find is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/⁊ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/⁊ (Tironian et). If that is the case it's amusing that it actually means "and".

ratmice 4y ago
looks exactly like U+29A2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Mathematical_Symbols-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Mathematical_Sym... Turned angle to me

int_19h 4y ago

Algol-60 didn't actually have the notion of keywords as such in the modern sense. The language grammar treats stuff like "if", "for" etc as fundamental terminal symbols without specifying how they're to be parsed distinctly from identically spelled identifiers. Each representation is supposed to come up with a way to make that distinction; for example, the reference representation uses bolding and/or underlining to distinguish keywords. So, for hardware representations, which are all linear lists of characters without formatting, they had to use some kind of escape sequence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stropping_(syntax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stropping_(syntax). The term itself comes from the most popular syntax for this, which was to put keywords in single quotes / apostrophes, but there were many other variants, including some identical to how we handle keywords today, as seen from this table. This approach also allowed for Algol programs to be "translated" to a language other than English in a sense that a representation could be defined that used native words for keywords. This was actually used to some extent in Europe, and especially in the USSR.