Research and Advances

“The FORTRAN language is intended to be capable of expressing any problem of numerical computation. In particular, it deals easily with problems containing large sets of formulae and many variables, and it permits any variable to have up to three independent subscripts. However, for problems in which machine words have a logical rather than a numerical meaning it is less satisfactory, and it may fail entirely to express some such problems. Nevertheless, many logical operations not directly expressable in the FORTRAN language can be obtained by making use of provisions for incorporating library routines.” This quotation is taken from “The FORTRAN Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 EDPM,” dated October 15, 1956. This first manual was a programmer's reference manual issued by the Programming Research Department of IBM. The original system and the original manual were the work of J. W. Backus, R. J. Beeber, S. Best, R. Goldberg, H. L. Herrick, R. A. Hughes (U.C.R.L., Livermore), L. B. Mitchell, R. A. Nelson, R. Nutt (United Aircraft), D. Sayre, P. B. Sheridan, H. Stern, and I. Ziller; all were associated with IBM except as noted.

Presented here is a computational extension of the variate difference method as developed by G. Tintner [1].

Trapping an instruction which cannot normally be trapped can be worthwhile, particularly when an existing program is to be revised. However, under those circumstances one would desire to replace instructions on a one-for-one basis.

The proof of the non-existence of a phrase structure grammar for ALGOL 60 by Robert W. Floyd [Comm. ACM 5 (Sept. 1962)] depends on the assumption that a syntactically correct ALGOL program must be a block. The concept of “program” is defined ambiguously in the ALGOL Report, as pointed out by Naur [1], but it is generally accepted that a program is defined as a self-contained statement. If this definition is taken, Floyd's proof becomes incomplete in that it ignores the fact that the following are syntactically correct ALGOL programs: begin; end begin end &lpargt;dummy statement⦔

The documentation of COMIT reflects the conviction that adequate user manuals are as much a part of a successful problem-oriented language system as is the compiler itself. Without adequate manuals, a language could not be easily learned or used, and much of the convenience that is implicit in the idea of a problem-oriented language would be lost. The COMIT manuals are thus as user-oriented as the language itself.