The design and implementation of a system development language which is economical to implement is described Both macro processing and compiling techniques are used to translate it The advantages and disadvantages of using such a language are discussed together with the main problems met in its implementation © 1973 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

A portable language for system development

Software engineering research is facilitated by the availability of general purpose programs which aid the production of other programs. These may conveniently be termed ‘software tools’. Software tools in themselves often represent a significant amount of intellectual effort and so their portability between different computing environments is important. We consider the requirements on an ALGOL 60 system to enable it to act as a recipient of a software tool written in ALGOL. In particular, our experience of implementing the translator–writing system, SID, on KDF9 is discussed.

Valerie J. Calderbank

Papers

Some comments on the portability of a large algol program—the implementation of SID on KDF9