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Old 14th Nov 2020, 9:40 pm   #1
julie_m
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Question Old Programming Language

Does anybody else remember an old programming language -- probably a dialect of BASIC on some obscure micro -- that allowed you to omit the star from a multiplication, so you could write something like
Code:
100 Y=3X+A
or did I imagine it?
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Old 14th Nov 2020, 9:59 pm   #2
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

I don't remember anything like that, though there have been an awful lot of high level languages in the last 70 years.

On second thoughts, maybe you could do something like that in Snobol4, though it wouldn't be the normal way to code integer multiplication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL
https://www.snobol4.org/docs/burks/tutorial/ch1.htm
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Old 14th Nov 2020, 10:33 pm   #3
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Not really an answer but some like stoic & forth used used reverse polish notation, cant remember an RPN basic though. I think M5 on the Nascom was RPN.

At BT for the high level stuff we used PLI80 - today, no-one seems to have heard of it!
Still have some of my PLI80 here, including an old skool BBS

Quote:
Originally Posted by julie_m View Post
...that allowed you to omit the star from a multiplication...
Took me ages to edit a Star Trek listing which had no spaces between keywords, NIBL style... your 'no multiply' notation would be even more tricky!
Did the opposite also work, so 3W is the same as W3 (W3 being a valid variable!) ?
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Old 14th Nov 2020, 11:04 pm   #4
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Generally, the high-level programming languagues that I worked with would have expressed an equation like that as Y=3*X+A

+ = add
- = subtract
* = multiply
/ = divide
^ = raise to the power
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Old 14th Nov 2020, 11:41 pm   #5
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

I recall that TI-Basic could do this implicit multiplication. Speaking as a compiler writer, it is a particularly disgusting programming language feature! It can give rise to some tricky syntactic and semantic ambiguities.

Best wishes

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Old 15th Nov 2020, 2:26 pm   #6
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Quote:
Originally Posted by deswradio View Post
... disgusting ...



Yet in maths, its standard notation
Proof that the machines have more hurdles to jump before taking over, humans can readily resolve complex equations with implied multiplication!
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 4:07 pm   #7
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

One wonders what such a parser would make of the expression

Y=2E-3X+A

Is that 0.002 * X + A or 2*E - 3*X +A?
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 4:12 pm   #8
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

It could be resolved, it's just a question of syntax and coding conventions. Most programmers would agree that this would be poor design though. It's much better to have explicit unambiguous binary operators.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 4:19 pm   #9
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

For the first interpretation, even in a formula for human consumption, there needs to be some indication that the "-3" is a power rather than a subtraction. Normally this is by showing it in superscript.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 7:36 pm   #10
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

FORTRAN maybe? long time ago, sorry.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 8:45 pm   #11
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

I don't think that even the earliest Fortran versions allowed you to avoid the star for multiplication. I stand by my comment that it's a disgusting feature - it's just oozing with ambiguity or the potential for ambiguity and that's something you definitely don't want in a programming language. Does A3 have the same value as 3A?!
I think that today, the only common use of value/variable juxtaposition is string concatenation.

Programming language design is a fascinating subject...

Best wishes

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Old 15th Nov 2020, 8:50 pm   #12
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

In an algebraic formula the number would always precede the variable, so you would never encounter A3 instead of 3A.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 9:15 pm   #13
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

I remember using MathCAD under MS-DOS in about 1990. It understood standard algebraic expressions natively. There were also a lot of TI and Casio programmable calculators around then which didn't need the multiplication sign either.

Chris
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 9:45 pm   #14
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Quote:
Originally Posted by ValvoStef View Post
FORTRAN maybe? long time ago, sorry.
No, Fortran has some really horrible features, but that isn't one of them.

There was a fad in the 1980s and 90s for programmers to compete as to who could write the most terse and impenetrable C code. This was known to be bad practice even then (there are no efficiency benefits, as the compiler optimises the code anyway).

Some languages are notoriously verbose without even being unambiguous, most notably Cobol. People used to say that you could feed your email inbox into a Cobol compiler and it would produce executable code without errors (though there's no knowing what the program would actually do if you ran it - possibly some Terminator scenario).

MULTIPLY X BY 3 ADDING A GIVING Y.

Programmers hate Cobol, even Cobol programmers. Nevertheless, many lines of Cobol are still being run now, 60 years after they were written.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 10:16 pm   #15
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

By the way, it was always drummed into me that FORTRAN (which was my first introduction to computer programming at the end of the 1960s) was, for some reason, always spelt in capital letters. No doubt, if it were invented today it would be spelt ForTran, being a contraction of "formula translation" (or something like that).

As for COBOL (COmmon Business Orient(at)ed Language), I fortunately never had to use that in earnest, though I did learn it as part of my Computer Studies course at college. As described by Paul, "verbose" sums it up well.
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Old 15th Nov 2020, 10:34 pm   #16
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Most computer terms in the 60s and 70s were upper case only, because computers used weird restricted character sets to save the odd bit of memory (literally - 6 bits per character instead of 7 or 8). When I started as a postgrad student in 1978, Oxford was still using an ICL1906A mainframe which was uppercase only, though it was in the process of being retired.
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 12:43 am   #17
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

At the time I left Plessey in 1976 we were still writing programs for our time share computer on a teleprinter that only had an upper case font. Our local storage medium was 7 hole 1" paper tape.
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 10:24 am   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paulsherwin View Post
When I started as a postgrad student in 1978, Oxford was still using an ICL1906A mainframe which was uppercase only, though it was in the process of being retired.
As an aside, Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) also had some flavour of ICL 1900 (I don't remember the exact model) when I was there in the early 1970s, which was where I fed my efforts at COBOL.

By the way, a bit of further investigation has revealed that FORTRAN has now officially been renamed as Fortran, dropping the earlier insistence upon capitals. As you say, this presumably reflects the move away from early computers with their restricted character sets. COBOL however, being an acronym, is still capitalised.
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 11:25 am   #19
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

The government insisted the public sector bought British whenever possible in the 60s, so ICT/ICL sold lots of the 1900 series to universities and polys. Only a few had non ICL mainframes - I think Cambridge somehow managed to buy an IBM360.
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 1:31 pm   #20
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Quote:
I think Cambridge somehow managed to buy an IBM360
They did and I have used it, many years ago.
 
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