COMAL

COMAL
Paradigm structured
Designed by Benedict Løfstedt and Børge R. Christensen
First appeared 1973
Typing discipline strong
Influenced by
BASIC, Pascal

COMAL (Common Algorithmic Language) is a computer programming language developed in Denmark by Benedict Løfstedt and Børge R. Christensen in 1973.

The "COMAL 80 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE REPORT" contains the formal definition of the language.

Design

COMAL was created as a mixture of the prevalent educational programming languages of the time, BASIC, Pascal, and, at least in the Commodore and Compis versions, the "turtle graphics" of Logo. The language was meant to introduce structured programming elements in an environment where BASIC would normally be used.

History

In the early 1980s, Apple Computer won a contract to supply Apple II computers running CP/M and COMAL to Irish secondary schools.

In 1984 Acornsoft released a COMAL implementation, by Paul Christensen and Roy Thorton, for their 8-bit BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers.[1]

Between 1984-1987 TeleNova, a subsidiary of the industrial arm of the Swedish Telecoms system, Teli industrier manufactured a desktop PC called "Compis" for the educational sector. An enhanced version of COMAL was supplied as the standard programming language for this PC. Versions were created for both CP/M86 and MS-DOS. The latter version is available for Windows XP. The (Swedish) reference manual is ISBN 91-24-40022-X

In 1990 Thomas Lundy and Rory O'Sullivan produced the definitive text on COMAL Programming. They matched and compared COMAL with BBC Structured Basic.

As of 2016 COMAL is still actively in use as an educational programming language. Some high schools in the United Kingdom continue to use it to teach the subject of Computing.

Availability

COMAL is available for:

Examples

Conditions:

 IF condition THEN
   instructions
 ENDIF

Loops:

 FOR number:= 1 TO 1000 DO   
  PRINT number
 ENDFOR

Print statements with variables:

 INPUT "Whats your favourite number..." :nmr%
 CLS
 PRINT "Your favourite number is " ; nmr%

"Hello, world!"

10 PAGE
20 FOR number:= 1 TO 10 DO
30  PRINT "HELLO, WORLD!"
40 NEXT or ENDFOR (Unicomal)
50 END " "

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Thorton, Roy; Christensen, Paul (1984). Comal on the B. B. C. Microcomputer and Acorn ELECTRON SBD 19. Acornsoft. ISBN 978-0907876908.

External links


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