Alef (programming language)

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The Alef programming language was designed by Phil Winterbottom of Bell Labs as part of the Plan 9 operating system.

In a February 2000 slideshow, Rob Pike noted: "…although Alef was a fruitful language, it proved too difficult to maintain a variant language across multiple architectures, so we took what we learned from it and built the thread library for C."

[edit] Example

This example was taken from [1]. The piece illustrates the use of Tuple data type.

(int, byte*, byte) 
 func() 
 { 
  return (10, "hello", ’c’); 
 }
 void 
 main() 
 {
   int a; 
   byte* str; 
   byte c; 
   (a, str, c) = func(); 
 }

[edit] See also

• Limbo - A direct successor of Alef. The Limbo programming language is the most commonly used language in the Inferno operating system.
• Plan 9 from Bell Labs - The original environment where Alef was developed.

[edit] Trivia

• Alef is purported to be Dennis Ritchie's favorite programming language.

[edit] References

• Winterbottom, Phil (1995). "Alef Language Reference Manual", Plan 9 Programmer's Manual: Volume Two (PDF), Murray Hill: AT&T. 
• Flandrena, Bob (1995). "Alef Users' Guide", Plan 9 Programmer's Manual: Volume Two (PDF), Murray Hill: AT&T. 
• Phil Winterbottom (1992-10-20). "Plan9 VM". comp.os.research. (Web link).
• TLC Hackers' Hall of Fame

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