ECL programming language

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The ECL programming language and system was an extensible high-level programming language and development environment developed at Harvard University in the 1970's. The name 'ECL' stood for 'Extensible Computer Language' or 'EClectic Language'. Some publications used the name 'ECL' for the entire system and 'EL/1' (Extensible Language) for the language itself.

ECL was an interactive system where programs were represented within the system; there was a compatible compiler and interpreter. It had an ALGOL-like syntax and an extensible data type system, with data types as first-class citizens. Data objects were values, not references, and the calling conventions gave a choice between call by value and call by reference for each argument.

ECL was primarily used for research and teaching in programming language design, programming methodology, and programming environments at Harvard, though it was said to be used at some government agencies as well. Its only implementation was on the PDP-10.

[edit] References

PISEL = Proceedings of the international symposium on Extensible languages, Grenoble, France, 1971, published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices 6:12, December 1971.

• Benjamin M. Brosgol, "An implementation of ECL data types", PISEL 87-95.
• Thomas E. Cheatham, Jr., Glenn H. Holloway, Judy A. Townley, "Program refinement by transformation", Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Software engineering, 1981, p. 430-437. ISBN 0-89791-146-6
• Glenn H. Holloway, "Interpreter/compiler integration in ECL", PISEL 129-134.
• Charles J. Prenner, "The control structure facilities of ECL", PISEL 104-112.
• Ben Wegbreit, "An overview of the ECL programming system", PISEL.
• Ben Wegbreit, "Studies in extensible programming languages." Technical Report ESD-TR-70-297. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1970.
• Ben Wegbreit et al., "ECL Programmer's Manual", Center for Research in Computing Technology, Harvard University, September 1972.