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From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: references wanted to CPL programming language
Message-ID: <2322@aw.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 1-Sep-87 11:24:33 EDT
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Posted: Tue Sep  1 11:24:33 1987
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In article <1621@watcgl.waterloo.edu> kdmoen@watcgl.UUCP (Doug Moen) writes:
>Does anybody know of accessable references that describe the CPL programming
>language?
>
>Just to provide some background, CPL stands for either Cambridge
>Programming Language or Combined Programming Language.  It was designed
>sometime during the 1960's.
>
>BCPL is a stripped down, and typeless version of CPL.  B is a stripped
>down version of BCPL.  And C is an extended version of B.
>-- 
>Doug Moen
>University of Waterloo Computer Graphics Lab
>UUCP:     {ihnp4,watmath}!watcgl!kdmoen
>INTERNET: kdmoen@cgl.waterloo.edu

The only published description I know of is called "The main Features
of CPL", and appeared these many years ago in the Computer Journal
(house journal of the British Computer Society), Vol 6.  The main
author was D W Barron.

Various working papers on the language used to be available from
the Oxford University Programming Research Group (45 Banbury Road,
Oxford, England); I have a complete copy and would be prepared to
send a LIMITED number of photocopies to anyone really interested.

The acronym indeed stands for "Combined Programming Language", the
things combined being the universities of Oxford and London.  Much
of the design work on the language was done by Christopher Strachey.

BCPL is described in Martin Richards' book "BCPL, the Language and its
Compiler".

B was derived from it mainly by replacing the Algol-like syntax with 
one more to the liking of the deriver.  As you might suspect, I loath
it.