Re: Google summer of code

[Kelly Leahy]

Akim,

Pascal did exist on mainframes, and in fact, was quite
prevalent, at least in the insurance industry (where I
work).  Much of the code I've worked on was passed
down from mainframe code (now on PCs, previously on
some sort of minis - I don't know which).

I'm pretty confident that there was a MVS Pascal
implementation, and there were at least one or two
others.  I've never worked with them myself, but I've
worked on a whole lot of code that was originally
written for mainframe environments.

Kelly

--- Akim Demaille <address@hidden> wrote:

> 
> Le 9 mai 06 à 17:36, Derek M Jones a écrit :
> 
> > Akim,
> >
> >>> The main requirement is to resync so that
> cascading syntax errors
> >>> are avoided.  One compiler I worked on did
> multiple parses, using
> >>> different combinations of error recovery,
> looking for the one that
> >>> parsed the largest amount of input (up to some
> limit) without
> >>> generating any other syntax errors.
> >> What was the underlying technology of the
> parsers?  I guess it was
> >> LL, right?  Were they written by hand?
> >
> > It was yacc running under Unix version 7 on a
> PDP-11 cross
> > compiled to a mainframe.  Our users only got a few
> goes at
> > compiling their code everyday (it was a mainframe
> batch
> > environment) and it was very important that the
> compiler
> > did its best to generate them some kind of
> executable so
> > at least they might be able to try out some parts
> of the code.
> >
> > All the best error recovery I have every seen
> occurs in compilers
> > running on mainframes.  Not because the cost of
> renting the software
> > was an arm and a leg, but because the users got to
> have so
> > few goes at compiling in a day.
> 
> Yep, I knew most of the value is there.  In fact,
> that's also
> very clear when one reads Corbett's PhD, on
> "semantical"
> error recovery, which prompted him to write what
> today is
> named Bison :)  (He was no aiming at main frames
> though.  I
> don't think Pascal ever run on main frames.  But
> that's just
> my guess.)
> 
> I'm just stunned that you had such an elaborate
> error recovery
> system on top of stock yacc!
> 
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