Re: Class Notes for a PL/I Course.

On Sun, 6 Oct 2019, Bernd Oppolzer berndoppolzer-/[email protected] [H390-MVS] wrote:

> Hi Peppe,
>
> I would like to thank you again for posting the PL/1 Argonne text book :-)

Well, I thought I found a reference anyone on this list know,
glad to ear it hasn't been, as I was almost on the border
too just keep it on my books library.


>
> it is really very good, and I have been spending many hours until now

If it looks that way to the eyes of an experienced PL/I coder,
I think I really found a gem in the mood ;-)

> reading the first 3 chapters; although I know most of it, I found some of the
> homework tasks very interesting. In my experience many of the PL/1 coders
> in the real world of today don't really understand all the bells and whistles 
> (and pitfalls)
> of the PL/1 language, for example what can all go wrong with BY NAME, if
> names don't match, and what is ISUB defining and so on.
>
> I tried the homework examples of chapter 3 with PL/1 (F), and they all worked 
> :-)
>
> if you want to take a look:
>
> http://bernd-oppolzer.de/testp4.pli.txt

I will! Thanks Bernd!

Peppe.

P.S. I translated the short piece of C code I wrote
time ago to access DDNAMES, under the advices of Tony,
in PL/I (F) and it seems to work so far.

The only problem is my PL/I ;-)

By the way reading around, I've found these references

PL/I(F) 1966    IBM - New York Programming Center - Hursley (UK)
BCPL    1967    Martin Richards - University of Cambridge
C       1972    Dennis Ritchie  - AT&T Bell Labs

which drive what seems, to my eyes, a thread rooting
these languaes to ALGOL (1958), through a strict relationship
between them.

That would explain why our PL/I(F) lack LEAVE/ITERATE.

I bet we would find them in BCPL loops? Hence those constructs
would have born between 1966 and 1972? Probably with BCPL in 1967?

Anyone have time to add real history references to
this too simple scheme?