UNCOL
UNCOL (Universal Computer Oriented Language) is a universal
UNCOL was intended to make compilers economically available for each new
Each machine architecture would require just one compiler back end, and each programming language would require one compiler front end. This was a very ambitious goal because compiler technology was in its infancy, and little was standardized in computer hardware and software.History
The concept of such a universal intermediate language is old: the SHARE report (1958) already says "[it has] been discussed by many independent persons as long ago as 1954." Macrakis (1993) summarizes its fate:
UNCOL was an ambitious effort for the early 1960s. An attempt to solve the compiler-writing problem, it ultimately failed because language and compiler technology were not yet mature. In the 1970s, compiler-compilers ultimately contributed to solving the problem that UNCOL set itself: the economical production of compilers for new languages and new machines.
UNCOL is sometimes used as a generic term for the idea of a universal intermediate language. The Architecture Neutral Distribution Format is an example of an UNCOL in this sense, as are various bytecode systems such as UCSD Pascal's p-code, and most notably Java bytecode.[3]
See also
- LLVM
- GIMPLE
Notes
- . Retrieved 21 February 2022.
- John Levine (23 November 2021). "UNCOL and Reversing modifications from mailing lists". dmarc-ietf (Mailing list). Retrieved 24 November 2021.
- ISBN 0230374085, p. 10
References
- Conway, Melvin E. (1 October 1958). "Proposal for an UNCOL". Communications of the ACM. 1 (10): 5–8. ISSN 0001-0782.
- Jean E. Sammet, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, Prentice-Hall, 1969. Chapter X.2: UNCOL (Significant Unimplemented Concepts), p. 708.
- SHARE Ad-Hoc Committee on Universal Languages (J. Strong, J. Olsztyn, J. Wegstein, O. Mock, A. Tritter, T. Steel), "The Problem of Programming Communication with Changing Machines", Communications of the ACM 1:8:12–18 (August 1958) and 1:9:9–15 (September 1958).
- Stavros Macrakis, "From UNCOL to ANDF: Progress in Standard Intermediate Languages", White Paper, Open Software Foundation Research Institute, RI-ANDF-TP2-1, January, 1992. Available at CiteSeer
- T.B. Steel, Jr., "UNCOL: Universal Computer Oriented Language Revisited", Datamation (Jan/Feb 1960), p. 18.
- T.B. Steel, Jr., "A First Version of UNCOL", Proc. Western Joint Computer Conference 19:371 (Los Angeles, May 9–11, 1961).
- T.B. Steel, Jr., "UNCOL: The Myth and the Fact", Annual Review in Automatic Programming 2:325 (1961).