[GTALUG] Suggestions: A Book for a Beginner, new to the Linux Shell

phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca
Sun Jul 17 22:30:17 EDT 2016


> Many years ago (in the 1970s) I read the manual he produced for ML/1,
> his macroprocessor.  I was startled at how well the manual worked, at
> least for me, at least at that time.  Perhaps the best manual I have read.
>
> Apparently ML/1 was the result of his PhD research, completed in 1967.
> Computers back then were a quite different beasts.  Still, I might
> consider using ML/1 now.  Much more comfortable than M4.  Most of the
> links here seem to be broken:
>   <http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/pjbrown/public_html/ml1/>
> This seems OK:
>   <http://www.ml1.org.uk/>
>
> I noticed that they have a PDP-8 implementation.  I thought that
> ML/1 into 4K words (of 12 bits) would be impossible.  Turns out that
> they used two "fields" originally, and then three.  So 8K and then 12K
> words.  Still remarkable.
>
> The implementation of ML/1 is quite interesting.  It was made to be
> portable and self-compiling.  This is before C and UNIX.
>   <http://www.ml1.org.uk/implementation.html>

That is interesting.I notice that he also has a book on 'Interactive
Compilers', so maybe that is related. He does write very well.

Peter



More information about the talk mailing list