Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!ncrcce!c10sd3!anderson
From: anderson@c10sd3.Comten.NCR.COM (Joel Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: pd lang
Message-ID: <225@c10sd3.Comten.NCR.COM>
Date: 4 Mar 88 15:13:36 GMT
References: <463@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <751@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> <8973@sunybcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: anderson@c10sd3.Comten.NCR.COM (Joel Anderson)
Organization: NCR Comten, St. Paul, MN
Lines: 30
Keywords: COMAL
Summary: COMAL - high level language and more

In article <8973@sunybcs.UUCP> bowen@joey.UUCP (Devon E Bowen) writes:
>In article <751@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> relkins@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Rob Elkins) writes:
>>
>>A while back I heard of a language called comal. It had pascal-like procedures,
>>and the ability to do recursion,(I think since it had call-by-name procedures),
>>perhaps someone knows if its still available.  There was a society which was
>>responsible for distribuiting it.
>
>I've got an old copy of it. I played with it for an afternoon and it seemed
>to be an easy to work with language. Sort of a combination of BASIC, Pascal
>and logo (it's uses turtle graphics). The only problem with it is that the
>language itself takes up 85% of the memory! Now, my copy is old. Maybe things
>have changed a bit. I can boot it up and post the address of the group that
>distributes it in the US if anyone would like it.
>
>				    Devon Bowen (KA2NRC)
>				    University at Buffalo

Actually the language you have is almost certainly PD -and almost certainly 
out of date.  Currently 0.14 (the PD version) is replaced by the "power driver" which adds numerous commands, expands the amount of free memory to 15K and
(for money, not PD) offers a compiler to create standalone COMAL programs
that do not require the language package (much more run-time memory) no
speed advantage though.  
Comal offers recursion, variable scoping, any length fully recognized
variable names, listing that automatically indents the structure.

Information is available online on Qlink, as is the Power Driver version of
COMAL.  There is also a cartridge based version 2.xx available which offers
much more.  It is used in Europe for education, outperforms BASIC in many
ways (speed, structure, ease of use) and is implemented on IBM PCs, VAXs,
and in progress on Mac and Apple.