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[21-04-2025] SUPPER, a "modern" stropping regime for Algol 68
=============================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
A draft of a proposed GNU extension to the Algol 68 programming
language has been published today at [1].
SUPPER stropping in Algol 68
This new stropping regime aims to be more appealing to contemporary
programmers, and also more convenient to be used in today's
computing systems, while at the same time retaining the full
expressive power of a stropped language and being 100% backwards
compatible as a super-extension.
The stropping regime has been already implemented in the GCC Algol
68 front-end [2] and also in the Emacs a68-mode [3] that provides
full automatic indentation and syntax highlighting.
The sources of the godcc program [4] have been already transitioned
to the new regime, and the result is quite satisfactory. Take a
look!
Comments and suggestions for the draft are very welcome, and would
help to move the draft forward to a final state. Please send them
to algol68@gcc.gnu.org.
Salud, and happy Easter everyone!
[1] https://algol68-lang.org/docs/GNU68-2025-004-supper.pdf
[2] https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Algol68FrontEnd
[3] https://git.sr.ht/~jemarch/a68-mode
[4] https://git.sr.ht/~jemarch/godcc
[20-03-2025] Homepage for Algol 68
==================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
The Algol 68 programming language got a new homepage: https://www.algol68-lang.org.
[08-03-2025] DWARF codes assigned for Algol 68
==============================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
We just got official DWARF codes assigned to Algol 68, and
adapted the GCC front-end to use them.
For DWARF 5, DW_LANG_Algol68 = 0x44.
For DWARF 6, DW_LNAME_Algol68 = 0x2e with versioning schema YYYY,
starting with 1973 for the original Revised language. The language
extensions we are working on will be encoded in subsequent versions,
2025 etc.
DWARF issue 250304.1.
[03-02-2025] Algol 68 in Compiler Explorer
==========================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Thanks to Marc Poulhiès the Compiler Explorer instance at
godbolt.org now has support for compiling Algol 68 programs
using ga68, the Algol 68 GNU compiler based in GCC which
is under development.
https://godbolt.org/z/6s9aqvW4K
On a related note, the demo application that I am using as
both as a test and a showcase for the front-end, called
godcc, is precisely a full-fledged command-line
interface to Compiler Explorer, written in Algol 68. It
hopefully shows how powerful, clear, concise and modern the
language is.
godcc: a command-line interface to Compiler Explorer
Finally, yesterday support for Algol 68 in Automake got
integrated upstream and shall be available at the next
release. The corresponding support for Autoconf is still
being reviewed in the project's development list. The Emacs
a68-mode mode, that provides syntax highlighting and
smart indentation of Algol 68 programs, got also added to
the ELPA archive. The development of the front-end itself
is progressing and soon we shall be able to get it integrated
in GCC proper.
GCC Algol 68 front-end development page
[01-01-2025] Algol 68 Front-End for GCC
=======================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Just posted a WIP series for an Algol 68 front-end for GCC. It is
about time to have support for the best programming language ever
designed in the best optimizing compiler ever made ;)
Thanks to Marcel van der Veer for his awesome parser, that I took
the liberty to borrow from Algol 68 Genie. Free Software for the win!
WIP patch series in gcc-patches...
[12-10-2024] bugz-mode and a68-mode now in sourcehut
====================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
I have decided to start using sourcehut for a few of my projects.
The first projects landing there are bugz-mode and a68-mode, two
Emacs modes. The first implements a quite efficient and comfortable
interface to bugzilla. The second is a programming mode for Algol 68.
Let's see how it goes!
https://git.sr.ht/~jemarch
[28-01-2023] Interesting poke idiom: sparse tables
==================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
During tonight poke online office hours our friend hdzki came with
an interesting use case. He is poking at some binary structures
that are like sparse tables whose entries are distributed in the
file in an arbitrary way.
Each sparse table is characterized by an array of consecutive
non-NULL pointers. Each pointer points to an entry in the table.
The table entries can be anywhere in the IO space, and are not
necessarily consecutive, nor be in order.
Full text...
[02-03-2021] Padding and aligning data in GNU poke
==================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
It is often the case in binary formats that certain elements are
separated by some data that is not really used for any meaningful
purpose other than occupy that space. The reason for keeping that
space varies from case to case; sometimes to reserve it for future
use, sometimes to make sure that the following data is aligned to some
particular alignment. This is known as "padding". There are several
ways to implement padding in GNU poke. This article shows these
techniques and discusses their advantages and disadvantages.
Full text...
[01-03-2021] Learning the Poke language in Y minutes
====================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor has written a nice short tutorial called
"Learn the Poke Language in Y minutes". The tutorial has the form
of a Poke program itself, and I think it really highlights the most
uncommon (and useful!) features of our domain-specific language.
Full text...
[24-02-2021] Using maps in GNU poke
===================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Editing data with GNU poke mainly involves creating mapped values
and storing them in Poke variables. However, this may not be that
convenient when poking several files simultaneously, and when the
complexity of the data increases. poke provides a convenient
mechanism for this: maps and map files.
Full text...
[15-11-2020] GNU poke development news
======================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
The development of GNU poke is progressing well, and we keep hopes for
a first release before the end of the year: we are determined for
something good to happen in 2020! ;)
This article briefly reviews the latest news in the development of the
program, like changes in certain syntax to make the language more
compact, support for lambda expressions, support for stream-like IO
spaces and how they can be used to write filters, support for using
assignments to poke complex data structures, improvements in data
integrity, annoying bugs fixed, and more.
Full text...
[20-07-2020] Integral structs in GNU poke
=========================================
By Jose E. Marchesi
This weekend I finally implemented support for the so-called "integral
structs" in poke. This expands the expressivity power of Poke structs
to cover cases where data is stored in composited integral containers,
i.e. when data is structured within stored integers.
Full text...
[16-07-2020] Writing binary utilities with GNU poke
===================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
GNU poke is, first and foremost, intended to be used as an interactive
editor, either directly on the command line or using a graphical user
interface built on it. However, since its conception poke was
intended to provide a suitable and useful foundation on which other
programs, the so-called binary utilities, could be written. At last,
the development of poke has progressed to a point where we can start
writing such utilities, and the purpose of this article is to show a
small, albeit working and useful example of what can be achieved by
writing a few lines of Poke.
Full text...
[04-05-2020] Understanding Poke methods
=======================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Poke struct types can be a bit daunting at first sight. You can find
all sort of things inside them: from fields, variables and functions
to constraint expressions, initialization expressions, labels, other
type definitions, and methods.
Struct methods can be particularly confusing for the novice poker. In
particular, it is important to understand the difference between
methods and regular functions defined inside struct types. This
article will hopefully clear the confusion, and also will provide the
reader with a better understanding on how poke works internally.
Full text...
[03-05-2020] Multi-line output in poke pretty-printers
======================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
The ID3V1 tag format describes the format for the tags that are
embeded in MP3 files, giving information about the song stored in the
file, such as genre, the name of the artist, and so on. While hacking
the id3v1 pickle today, I found a little dilemma on how to best
present a pretty-printed version of a tag to the user.
Full text...
[02-03-2020] Interruptible poke
===============================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Poke has loops. It also does IO (yeah, right :D). On one hand, this
means that Poke programs that never finish are definitely possible
(here is one: `while (1) {}') and, on the other, a Poke program acting
on an enormous amount of data may take a long time to finish,
depending on what it does. Maybe hours, maybe even days?
Full text...
[02-02-2020] Hyperlink Support in GNU Poke
==========================================
by Darshit Shah
FOSDEM 2020 is over, and hyperlink support has just landed for GNU
Poke!
Wait, Hyperlinks!?
What do hyperlinks, a web concept, mean for GNU Poke, a terminal
application?
For many years now, terminal emulators have been detecting `http://'
URLs in the output of any program and giving the user a chance to
click on them and immediately navigate to the corresponding web
page. In 2017, Egmont Kob made a proposal
(https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda)
for supporting general hyperlinks in terminal emulators. Gnome
Terminal, iTerm and a few other terminal emulators have already
implemented this proposal in their latest releases. With Egmont's
proposal, an application can emit any valid URI and have the
terminal emulator take the user to that resource.
Full text...
[13-01-2020] First Poke-Conf at Mont-Soleil - A report
======================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Poking at Mont-Soleil
This last weekend we had the first gathering of poke developers, as
part of the GNU Hackers Meeting at Mont-Soleil, in Switzerland. I can
say we had a lot of fun, and it was a quite productive meeting too:
many patches were written, and many technical aspects designed and
clarified.
Full text...
[25-10-2019] Endianness in Poke - And a little nice hack
========================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Byte endianness is an important aspect of encoding data. As a good
binary editor poke provides support for both little and big endian,
and will soon acquire the ability to encode exotic endianness like PDP
endian. Endianness control is integrated in the Poke language, and is
designed to be easily used in type descriptions. Let's see how.
Full text...
[21-10-2019] Styled output in Poke programs
===========================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
I just committed support for styling in printf. Basically, it uses
the libtextstyle approach of having styling classes that the user can
customize in a .css file.
Full text...
[18-10-2019] Dealing with alternatives - Unions in Poke
=======================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
The Poke type definitions can be seen as a sort of declarative
specifications for decoding and encoding procedures. You specify the
structure of the data you want to operate on, and poke uses that
information to automatically decode and encode the data for you.
Under this perspective, struct types correspond to sequences of
instructions, array types to repetitions (or loops), and union types
to conditionals.
Full text...
[06-10-2019] Values of the world, unite! - Offsets in Poke
==========================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Early in the design of what is becoming GNU poke I was struck by a
problem that, to my surprise, would prove not easy to overcome in a
satisfactory way: would I make a byte-oriented program, or a
bit-oriented program? Considering that the program in question was
nothing less than an editor for binary data, this was no petty
dilemma.
Full text...
[03-10-2019] Array boundaries and closures in Poke
==================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
Poke arrays are rather peculiar. One of their seemingly bizarre
characteristics is the fact that the expressions calculating their
boundaries (when they are bounded) evaluate in their own lexical
environment, which is captured. In other words: the expressions
denoting the boundaries of Poke arrays conform closures. Also, the
way they evaluate may be surprising. This is no capricious.
Full text...
[01-10-2019] Nomenclature: poke, Poke and pickles
=================================================
by Jose E. Marchesi
GNU poke is a pretty new program and it introduces many a new concept.
As people are starting to join the development, I think it is a good
idea to clarify how I call things. The idea is for everyone to use
the same nomenclature when referring to pokeish thingies. Otherwise
its gonna get very confusing very soon!
Full text...
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