The Algol 68 Genie project

The development of Algol played an important role in establishing computer science as an academic discipline. The former Mathematisch Centrum Amsterdam, now Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica, was a leading institute in the design of Algol 68 , as it was in later years in the development of Python .

The Algol 68 Genie project preserves Algol 68 out of educational as well as scientific-historical interest, by making available a recent implementation written from scratch by Marcel van der Veer, together with extensive documentation for both the language and this new implementation.

Algol 68 Genie is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License; it is a fast compiler-interpreter which ranks among the most complete implementations of the language.

From this site you can download the current version and its documentation. The distribution lets you build Algol 68 Genie from source code on Linux or related operating systems. For Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 a WIN32 executable a68g.exe is provided that must be run using the Windows command line interpreter cmd.exe.

The documentation consists of detailed installation instructions, a comprehensive guide to programming in Algol 68, and the Revised Report on Algol 68.

Alternatively, on this site you can browse the source code.

Please send comments and bug reports to algol68g@xs4all.nl; your feedback will be appreciated.


Publications referring to Algol 68 Genie

Two-level grammars: Some interesting properties of van Wijngaarden grammars.
Luis M. Augusto, Omega - Journal of Formal Languages(1) [2023]

Strange Code - Esoteric Languages That Make Programming Fun Again
Ronald T. Kneusel, No Starch Press, San Fransisco [2022]

Exploring Algol 68 in the 21st century, and
Learn a new old language by programming a game in Algol 68
Chris Hermansen, opensource.com [2020]

Algol revisited
Paul Mallison, Crystallography News, British Crystallographic Association [2020]

Topics in Programming Languages, a Philosophical Analysis through the case of Prolog
Luís Homem, Universidad de Salamanca, Facultad de Filosofia [2018]

Algol 68 – A Retrospective
Daniel James, accu.org [2018]

Algol 68
Wikipedia


Posts in "Algol 68"

Marcel van der Veer Algol 68
Announcing Algol 68 Genie 3.0
December 2021

I have released the current source as version 3.0. I have also updated the documentation, Learning Algol 68 Genie …


Marcel van der Veer Algol 68
A brief history of Algol 68 Genie
November 2016

Being the author of Algol 68 Genie, people frequently ask me why a physical chemist wrote an Algol 68 compiler …


Marcel van der Veer Algol 68
Announcing Algol 68 Genie 2.0
September 2010

I have posted Algol 68 Genie Version 2.0.0 and its documentation …


Marcel van der Veer Algol 68
Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 68
June 2009

This is a translation of the Algol 68 Revised Report into HTML, for distribution with Algol 68 Genie, an Open Source Algol 68 interpreter …


Marcel van der Veer Algol 68
Announcing Algol 68 Genie 1.0
September 2002

Algol 68 was conceived as a successor to Algol 60 …



Posts in "Computing history"

Marcel van der Veer Computing History
A perspective of Algol 68
March 2023

To better understand the position of Algol 68 among today’s plethora of programming languages, we should consider their development …


Marcel van der Veer Computing history
FORTRAN - lingua franca with a promising future behind it
March 2022

In the eighties, science undergraduates like me took a course in structured programming at the computer science department …


Marcel van der Veer Computing history
VM/CMS and MVS/TSO reunited
October 2021

Virtualisation began half a century ago as a method of sharing mainframe resources between different operating systems, applications or users …


Marcel van der Veer Computing history
Algol68C on MVS revisited
August 2018

As the author of Algol 68 Genie I am interested in having access to other Algol 68 compilers for reference purposes …


Marcel van der Veer Computing history
Running Algol68C on MVS
October 2012

Recently, Algol68C Release 1.3039 was made public for download …