ALGOL 58

ALGOL 58 is the first language in the ALGOL programming language family. It was an early compromise design soon superseded by ALGOL 60; ALGOL 58 introduced the fundamental notion of compound statement, but it was restricted to control flow only, and it was not tied to identifier scope.

Related Topics:
ALGOL - Programming language - ALGOL 60 - Compound statement

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The language was originally proposed to be called IAL (International Algebraic Language), but at a meeting in Zürich in May 1958, IAL was rejected as an "'unspeakable' and pompous acronym" (Perlis, 1981), and ALGOL suggested instead, though not officially adopted until a year later. Unresolved disagreements also led to a plan to define two dialects, ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60.

Related Topics:
Zürich - 1958

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ALGOL 58 saw some implementation effort at IBM, but the effort was in competition with FORTRAN, and soon abandoned. It was also implemented at Dartmouth College on an LGP-30 but that implementation soon evolved into Algol 60.

Related Topics:
IBM - FORTRAN - LGP-30 - Algol 60

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ALGOL 58's primary contribution was to later languages; it was used as a basis for JOVIAL, MAD, and NELIAC. It was also used during 1959 to publish algorithms in CACM, beginning a trend of using ALGOL notation in publication that continued for many years.

Related Topics:
JOVIAL - MAD - NELIAC - Algorithm - CACM

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