Mary (programming language)

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MaryParadigm| imperative

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Family| ALGOL
Developer| RUNIT
First appeared| 1971; 53 years ago (1971)
Typing discipline| static, strong
OS| Cross-platform: Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk SM-4, Norsk Data Nord-10/ND-100, Univac-1100 series, ND-100/Sintran-III, i386, SPARC
Influenced by
ALGOL 68

Mary is a programming language designed and implemented by RUNIT at Trondheim, Norway in the 1970s. It borrowed many features from ALGOL 68 but was designed for systems programming (machine-oriented programming).

An unusual feature of its syntax was that expressions were constructed using the conventional infix operators, but all of them had the same precedence and evaluation went from left to right unless there were brackets. Assignment had the destination on the right and assignment was considered just another operator.

Similar to C, several language features appear to have existed to allow producing reasonably well optimised code, despite a quite primitive code generator in the compiler. These included operators similar to the `+=` et alter in C and explicit register declarations for variables.

Notable features:

* Dataflow syntax – values flow from left to right, including assignment
* Most constructs could be used in expressions: blocks, IF, CASE, etc.
* Text-based recursive macros
* Overloaded user-defined operators, not constrained to predefined identifiers as in C++
* Automatic building and dereferencing of pointers from type context
* Scalar range types
* Array and set enumeration in loop iterators
* Dynamic array descriptors (ROW)

A book describing Mary was printed in 1974 (Fourth and last edition in 1979): Mary Textbook by Reidar Conradi & Per Holager.

Compilers were made for Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk's SM-4 and Norsk Data Nord-10/ND-100 mini-computers. The original Mary compiler was written in NU ALGOL, ran on the Univac-1100 series and was used to bootstrap a native compiler for ND-100/Sintran-III. RUNIT implemented a CHILL compiler written in Mary which ran on ND-100 and had Intel 8086 and 80286 targets. When this compiler was ported to the VAX platform, a common backend for Mary and CHILL was implemented. Later, backends for i386 and SPARC were available. Since the Mary compiler was implemented in Mary, it was possible to run the compiler on all these platforms.

Mary is no longer maintained.

## Example

[edit]

BEGIN
INT i := 10;          %% Variable with initial value.
REF INT ri := i;      %% Pointer initialized to point to i.
INT j := 11;
j :- REF INT =: ri;   %% Type conversion and assignment
%% ri now points to j.
i =: (ri :- VAL REF INT);
%% Assignment and type conversion
%% ri points to j so j is changed.
IF j > 10             %% Conditional statement with result
THEN                  %% used inside an arithmetic expression.

ELSE

FI + j =: j;
END

## See also

[edit]

* ALGOL 68

## References

[edit]

* v
* t
* e

ALGOL programming

Implementations|

| Technical
standards|

* ALGOL 58
* ALGOL 60
* ALGOL 68

|

Dialects|

* ABC ALGOL
* ALCOR
* ALGO
* ALGOL 68C
* ALGOL 68-R
* ALGOL 68RS (ELLA)
* ALGOL 68S
* ALGOL N
* ALGOL W
* ALGOL X
* Atlas Autocode (Edinburgh IMP)
* Burroughs ALGOL
* CORAL 66
* Dartmouth ALGOL 30
* DASK ALGOL
* DG/L
* Elliott ALGOL
* Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language (ESPOL) → New Executive Programming Language (NEWP)
* FLACC
* IMP
* JOVIAL
* Kidsgrove Algol
* MAD
* Mary
* NELIAC
* RTL/2
* S-algol, PS-algol, Napier88
* Simula
* Small Machine ALGOL Like Language (SMALL)
* SMIL ALGOL

Formalisms|

* Jensen's device
* Van Wijngaarden grammar

Community|

| Organizations|

| Professional
associations|

* ALCOR Group
* Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
* BSI Group
* Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC)
* International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1
* Society of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM)

|

Business|

* Burroughs Corporation
* Elliott Brothers
* Regnecentralen

Education|

* Case Institute of Technology
* University of Edinburgh
* University of St Andrews
* Manchester University
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Government|

* Royal Radar Establishment (RRE)

People|

| ALGOL 58|

* John Backus
* Friedrich L. Bauer
* Hermann Bottenbruch
* Charles Katz
* Alan Perlis
* Heinz Rutishauser
* Klaus Samelson
* Joseph Henry Wegstein

MAD|

* Bruce Arden
* Bernard Galler
* Robert M. Graham

ALGOL 60|

* Backus^
* Roland Carl Backhouse
* Bauer^
* Richard Bird
* Stephen R. Bourne
* Edsger W. Dijkstra
* Andrey Ershov
* Robert W. Floyd
* Jeremy Gibbons
* Julien Green
* David Gries
* Eric Hehner
* Tony Hoare
* Jørn Jensen
* Katz^
* Peter Landin
* Tom Maibaum
* Conor McBride
* John McCarthy
* Carroll Morgan
* Peter Naur
* Maurice Nivat
* John E. L. Peck
* Perlis^
* Brian Randell
* Rutishauser^
* Samelson^
* Jacob T. Schwartz
* Micha Sharir
* David Turner
* Bernard Vauquois
* Eiiti Wada
* Wegstein^
* Adriaan van Wijngaarden
* Mike Woodger

Simula|

* Ole-Johan Dahl
* Kristen Nygaard

ALGOL 68|

* Bauer^
* Susan G. Bond
* Bourne^
* Robert Dewar
* Dijkstra^
* Gerhard Goos
* Michael Guy
* Hoare^
* Cornelis H. A. Koster
* Peter Landin
* Charles H. Lindsey
* Barry J. Mailloux
* McCarthy^
* Lambert Meertens
* Naur^
* Peck^
* Willem van der Poel
* Randell^
* Douglas T. Ross
* Samelson^
* Michel Sintzoff
* van Wijngaarden^
* Niklaus Wirth
* Woodger^
* Philip Woodward
* Nobuo Yoneda

* Hal Abelson
* John Barnes
* Tony Brooker
* Ron Morrison
* Peter O'Hearn
* John C. Reynolds

* ALGOL Bulletin

Comparison|

* ALGOL 58 influence on ALGOL 60
* ALGOL 68 to other languages
* ALGOL 68 to C++

* ^ = full name and link in prior ALGOL version above
Category: ALGOL Category: ALGOL 60

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