The BCPL Reference Manual

Abstract

BCPL is a language which is readable and easy to learn, as well as admitting an efficient compiler capable of generating efficient code. It is made self consistent and easy to define accurately by an underlying structure based on a simple idealized object machine. The treatment of data types is unusual and it allows the power and convenience of a language with dynamically varying types and yet the efficiency of FORTRAN. BCPL has been used successfully to implement a number of languages and has proved to be a useful tool for compiler writing. The BCPL compiler itself is written in BCPL and has been designed to be easy to transfer to other machines; it has already been transferred to more than ten different systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1974
Accession Number
ADA003599

Entities

People

  • Arthur Evans Jr.
  • Martin Richards
  • Robert F. Mabee

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Arithmetic
  • Assembly Languages
  • Automatic
  • Compilers
  • Computer Programming
  • Directives
  • Hash Tables
  • Language
  • Military Research
  • Operating Systems
  • Personality
  • Programming Languages
  • Semantics
  • Sequences
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Trees (Data Structures)

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Systems Analysis and Design