Oddly enough, you listed lots of bogus claims but forgot one that is legitimate: the default attributes depending on variable names. Of course, in FORTRAN it's wired in, but the original PL/I defaults matched FORTRAN.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Robin Vowels [robi...@dodo.com.au] Sent: Monday, March 28, 2022 6:26 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: PL/I question On 2022-03-28 20:43, Seymour J Metz wrote: > I'm fully aware of the initial name; the fact remains that IBM and > SHARE looked at three languages, and that FORTRAN had the least > influence of the three. Static storage came from FORTRAN. Edited input-output (format lists) came from FORTRAN. EXTERNAL came from FORTRAN. Function references came from FORTRAN. CALL statements came from FORTRAN. Computed GO TO came from FORTRAN. Remote formats came from FORTRAN Label parameters came from FORTRAN. Assignment statements came from FORTRAN. Implied DO came from FORTRAN. Data-directed I/O came from FORTRAN. FORMAT statements came from FORTRAN. DO statements came from FORTRAN. > Most of the language derives from Algol 60 Dynamic arrays and scalars came from ALGOL. Block structure came from ALGOL. Explicitly allocated arrays did not come from ALGOL. Free source form came from Algol. Conditional statements came from Algol. No I/O came from Algol. Generic functions did not come from Algol. > and COBOL, Data structures came from COBOL. Picture came from COBOL. Decimal came from COBOL. > and the most obvious feature from FORTRAN has gone by the > wayside. These new features were introduced in PL/I: BIT strings. scaled fixed binary. Varying-length strings. ALLOCATE-able variables. The means of detecting and intercepting run-time errors. integer overflow detection. subscript bounds checking. string range checking. preprocessor. > ________________________________________ > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on > behalf of Robin Vowels [robi...@dodo.com.au] > Sent: Monday, March 28, 2022 4:53 AM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: PL/I question > > On 2022-03-28 19:10, Seymour J Metz wrote: >> Exaclly, especially since Algol 60 was one of the three languages >> folded into PL/I. > > FORTRAN, not Algol, was the starting-point for PL/I. > It was even called FORTRAN VI. > Features of both Algol and COBOL were incorporated into > the language. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
