3 ms·

I'd agree - I think the classification of Pascal as an Algol60 derivative is a bit off - Wirth was on the committee that wrote Algol68 - my impression is that P

• int_19h 4y ago
  Wirth was on the committee that worked on what was then referred to as "Algol X", but at the time there was no agreement on what exactly that would be. His (and Hoare's) proposal was more incremental relative to Algol 60, removing some features and adding others - most importantly, first-class strings, pointers, and structs - while retaining the overall syntax and semantics. This proposal did not get enough support on the committee, though. Some people rejected it because they saw the additions as too minor, not warranting a whole new language so early. Others didn't like the fact that it relied on the same BNF + verbiage approach to define the spec that resulted in numerous ambiguities to Algol 60 (which was supposed to be rectified by the new formalism just developed by van Wijngaarden). So Algol 68 ended up evolving in a different direction overall, which Wirth consistently criticized, and stepped down from IFIP after it published the first draft of the language. He took his own proposal and turned it into Algol W; and that, in turn, became Pascal. So you could say that some of the concepts that made it into Pascal compared to Algol-60 - namely, pointers and records - had the same origin as those in Algol-68, but the point of divergence precedes either language.