Announcing the Turing Compiler

[Phyllis Eve Bregman]

          ANNOUNCING THE TURING LANGUAGE COMPILER

Believing that a programming  language  should  be  easy  to
teach  and  simple to use, yet capable of performing complex
calculations, R.C. Holt, J.R. Cordy and J.N.P. Hume  of  the
University   of   Toronto  have  created  the  new  computer
language--TURING, which we are now distributing.

The  Turing  language  is  a  general  purpose   programming
language  that is well suited for teaching programming, and,
in fact, it has been class-tested by over 3000  students  at
the University of Toronto since the summer of 1983.

Turing is a Pascal-like language  that  incorporates  almost
all of Pascal's features, however, it alleviates many of the
difficulties with Pascal.  For example, Turing provides con-
venient  string  handling;  it provides modules; its variant
records are type safe and  it  has  dynamic  parameters  and
arrays.

Turing has a simple, unwordy syntax, allowing  concentration
on what is being programmed rather than on language details.
As a result, although Turing is a more general language than
Pascal,  its  basic  features have an expressiveness that is
characteristic of more modest languages such  as  Basic  and
Logo.  Turing has been formally specified and is designed to
support formal verification  of  program  correctness.   Its
design has eliminated verification and security difficulties
of Pascal-like languages without adding inefficiency.

The Turing language  has  been  implemented  by  a  portable
user-friendly  compiler on the Vax, the IBM370 and (soon) on
various microprocessors such as the MC68000, NS16000.   Tur-
ing  for  the 8086 running MS-DOS will be available for dis-
tribution in the spring.

For a more complete description of the language, see  Turing
Language  Report by Richard C. Holt and James R. Cordy (CSRG
Technical Report No. 153), available from me, and  the  book
by  R.C. Holt and J.N.P. Hume, Introduction to Computer Sci-
ence using the TURING Programming Language (Reston  Publish-
ing Co., 1984, (703) 437 8900).

Distribution information  for  Turing  can  be  obtained  by
sending me your "hardcopy" mailing address.
-- 
		Phyllis Eve Bregman
		CSRG, Univ. of Toronto
		{decvax,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,allegra,utzoo}!utcsrgv!phyllis
		CSNET:  phyllis at toronto
		(416) 978 6985