ALGOL 58 - Definition and Overview

ALGOL 58 is the first language in the ALGOL programming language family. It was an early compromise design soon superseded by ALGOL 60; ALGOL 58 introduced the fundamental notion of compound statement, but it was restricted to control flow only, and it was not tied to identifier scope.

The language was originally proposed to be called IAL (International Algebraic Language), but at a meeting in Zurich in May 1958, IAL was rejected as an "'unspeakable' and pompous acronym" (Perlis, 1981), and ALGOL suggested instead, though not officially adopted until a year later. Unresolved disagreements also led to a plan to define two dialects, ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60.

ALGOL 58 saw some implementation effort at IBM, but the effort was in competition with FORTRAN, and soon abandoned.

ALGOL 58's primary contribution was to later languages; it was used as a basis for JOVIAL, MAD, and NELIAC. It was also used during 1959 to publish algorithms in CACM, beginning a trend of using ALGOL notation in publication that continued for many years.

Reference

• Alan J. Perlis and K. Samelson, "Preliminary Report - International Algorithmic Language" Communications of the ACM 1(12) 1958, pp. 8-22
• Alan J. Perlis, "The American side of the development of ALGOL", in Richard L. Wexelblat, ed. History of Programming Languages (Academic Press, 1981)

Example Usage of ALGOL