8 Jan
2020
8 Jan
'20
12:25 p.m.
On Jan 7, 2020, at 9:20 PM, Brian Walden
<tuhs(a)cuzuco.com> wrote:
Dave Horsfall wrote:
Tanenbaum’s “A tutorial on Algol 68” published in Computing Surveys, June 1976
mentions that # is one of the (four) ways a comment may be enclosed.
https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/74119499/11057
An earlier paper “Algol68 with fewer tears” by C H Lindsey, 1972
also mentions # as an alternate symbol.
https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/15/2/176/1002964/15-2-176.pdf
On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, Bakul Shah wrote:
Yes, but when was it implemented? Kernighan is first ever if it is not
before 1974. So I decided to look and it took me down a rabbit hole of
ALGOL taht leads back to Bourne shell and then right back to # (but in C) In Algol68 # ... # is one of the forms for block
comments!
Interesting... All we had at university though was ALGOL W (as far as I
know; there were several languages that mere students could not use, such
as FORTRAN H).