From: anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at   
      
   albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:   
   >In article <2025Sep29.075402@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,   
   >>For Algol 60 (not sure about Algol 68), they could not even agree on a   
   >>machine-readable representation of the programs.  I.e., you cannot   
   >>write a file containing any Algol 60 program that is guaranteed to be   
   >>compiled by all Algol 60 compilers; the behaviour of the program is   
   >>only when you have compiled it and can run it.   
   >   
   >The character set wherein the program is represented is irrelevant.   
   >I cannot compile a EBCDIC FORTRAN program in my linux system.   
      
   EBCDIC did not exist when Fortran was designed and released, so your   
   example demnstrates that different encodings are not the problem.  If   
   you get a Fortran program encoded in EBCDIC, you can convert it to   
   ASCII with a command like "recode ebcdic..ascii".  The important thing   
   is that you can then compile this program with a Fortran compiler on   
   Linux.   
      
   By contrast, even if there was an Algol 60 compiler on Linux, and if   
   the enoding used by that compiler is the same as that of the source   
   programs you have available (do you have any?), the Algol 60   
   specification would not guarantee that you can compile it with that   
   compiler, because the specification does not specify the   
   machine-readable representation of programs at all.   
      
   >>In Pascal, the program can access a pointer after DELETEing its   
   >>contants, and you can also DELETE the pointer several times, all not   
   >>defined by the language and typically resulting in programs behaving   
   >>other than intended.  The same kinds of execution sequences are often   
   >>mentioned as vulnerabilities in C programs (use after free, double   
   >>free); this only is not reported widely for Pascal programs because   
   >>there are no Pascal programs in wide use.   
   >   
   >That was an oversight, not intended.   
      
   Whether intended, oversight, or something else, this property of   
   Pascal is counterexample for your claim.   
      
   Prolog does not have this problem of Pascal, and yet it's standard   
   does not specify everything; it even has undefined behaviour.   
      
   - anton   
   --   
   M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html   
   comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html   
        New standard: https://forth-standard.org/   
   EuroForth 2025 CFP: http://www.euroforth.org/ef25/cfp.html   
   EuroForth 2025 registration: https://euro.theforth.net/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)