Algol

ALGOL (short for ALGOrithmic Language) is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which became the de facto standard way to report algorithms in print for almost the next 30 years. It was designed to avoid some of the perceived problems with FORTRAN and eventually gave rise to many other programming languages (including Pascal). ALGOL uses bracketed statement blocks and was the first language to use begin end pairs for delimiting them. Fragments of ALGOL-like syntax are sometimes still used as a notation for algorithms, so-called Pidgin Algol.

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There are three official main branches of ALGOL family: ALGOL 58, ALGOL 60, and ALGOL 68. Of these, ALGOL 60 was the most widely known in the United States. Niklaus Wirth based his own Algol-W on ALGOL 60, before moving to develop Pascal. Algol-W was intended to be the next generation ALGOL, but the majority of the ALGOL 68 committee decided to design a language that was more complex and advanced rather than a language that is basically a cleaned up version of ALGOL 60. The official ALGOL versions are named after the year they were first published. ALGOL 58 was originally known as the IAL (for International Algorithmic Language.)

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Note: throughout its effective life, the name of the programming language ALGOL was always presented in all-uppercase letters, and this is the practice adopted here.

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