GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next? [LWN.net]

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 7, 2017 22:18 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next? by cry_regarder
Parent article: GnuCOBOL 2.2 released

Yeah. Then there can be two contenders to rewrite the kernel in. Hard choices: PL/1 v COBOL... ;-)

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GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 7, 2017 23:26 UTC (Thu) by Tara_Li (guest, #26706) [Link] (2 responses)

What, no love for APL?

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 7, 2017 23:54 UTC (Thu) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link] (1 responses)

Rexx, CLIST, and JCL?

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 8, 2017 0:05 UTC (Fri) by Tara_Li (guest, #26706) [Link]

Brainfsck?

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 8, 2017 8:13 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

What's wrong with PL/1 - it's a good low-level language!

I've worked on an OS written in PL/1 (large chunks of it, at least), and it was a damn nice system. Pr1mos started out as FORTRAN, was migrated to PL/1 subset Pr1me, and then to C. It was a bit of a mess at the end, not surprisingly, but there were quite a few - very nice! - features enabled by the use of PL/1.

Cheers,
Wol

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 8, 2017 13:32 UTC (Fri) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]

Absolutely nothing wrong -- loved it.

GnuCOBOL 2.2 released --- PL/I next?

Posted Sep 14, 2017 12:53 UTC (Thu) by azz (subscriber, #371) [Link]

Those who want to work on a kernel written in PL/I can join the revived Multics project:

http://swenson.org/multics_wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I've been looking at converting their changelog history to Git for browsing purposes; work in progress here:

https://github.com/atsampson/multics-history-repo

PL/I is... a surprisingly nice language given when it was created! The syntax is a bit weird in places (e.g. structure definitions), but it's got several nice features (e.g. proper strings), and the majority of the Multics code I've looked at is quite pleasant to read.