Trac language processor wanted

John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us>
Fri, 11 Jan 91 17:25:06 EST

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Trac language processor wanted johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) (1991-01-11)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us>
Keywords: trac, macros, question
Organization: Compilers Central
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 17:25:06 EST

Trac is an obscure language from the mid-60s invented by Cal Mooers and Peter
Deutsch that has its passionately unreasonable partisans, of whom I am one.
It's basically a macrogenerator with a uniform approach to I/O unlike that in
any other macro language with which I am familiar. It's also the first
language that anyone attempted to standardize by trademarking the name and
only allowing the trademark to be used on approved implementations, an
approach later used for Ada. Trac is described in Ted Nelson's "Computer
Lib," and in fact I'm one of the people who introduced Ted to Trac.


Around 1970 Peter Eichenberger and I wrote Trac processors for the PDP-10 and
PDP-11. We wrote them in assembler language, since we didn't know any better
and there weren't any real alternatives at the time. I haven't used either a
PDP-10 or PDP-11 for over 10 years, and I miss my Trac processor. Does
anyone have a version written in something more portable, e.g. C, Fortran, or
Bourne shell?


#(ps,#(rs))'
John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl


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