catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  ALGOL 60
       
           ALGOrithmic Language 1960.
       
          A portable language for scientific computations.  ALGOL 60 was
          small and elegant.  It was block-structured, nested,
          recursive and free form.  It was also the first language
          to be described in BNF.
       
          There were three lexical representations: hardware,
          reference, and publication.  The only structured data types
          were arrays, but they were permitted to have lower bounds
          and could be dynamic.  It also had conditional expressions;
          it introduced :=; if-then-else; very general "for" loops;
          switch declaration (an array of statement labels generalising
          Fortran's computed goto).  Parameters were call-by-name
          and call-by-value.  It had static local "own" variables.
          It lacked user-defined types, character manipulation and
          standard I/O.
       
          See also EULER, ALGOL 58, ALGOL 68, Foogol.
       
          ["Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60", Peter Naur
          ed., CACM 3(5):299-314, May 1960].
       
          (1995-01-25)