POP-11?

[Aaron Sloman]

This message was forwarded to me by a reader of unix-wizards.

>Date: Thu, 13 Jul 89 14:31 CST
>From: T B A L <RUSOFFMH at edu.vanderbilt.ctrvx1>
>Subject: POP-11?
>To: UNIX-WIZARDS at mil.brl.sem
>Message-Id:  <8907131532.aa25920 at SEM.BRL.MIL>
>
>Has anyone out there heard of a language called POP or POP-11? If
>so, could you point me to some reference material on it? I think it
>may have originated on PDP's (the 11 implies this) and there is a version
>for the Mac called Alpha-POP. It appears to be like a hybrid of
>FORTH and Lisp.
>
>Thanx.......
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Martin H. Rusoff
>Vanderbilt University

Yes the original version was called POP-11 because there had been a
POP-10 for DEC-10 computers. Before that it was POP-2, the language
used for AI research at Edinburgh University through most of the
1970s, till they diversified and used Prolog and Lisp as well as POP.

Pop-11 is now a powerful language similar in functionality Common Lisp
but with a syntax more like Pascal (which people not used to Lisp often
find an easier way into AI programming), and a number of special
features of its own, e.g. lightweight processes, a pattern matcher.

Yes, like Forth it uses a stack for arguments and results, separate from
the procedure calling stack.

Since 1981 when POP-11 was ported to the VAX it has become incorporated in
Poplog, which now includes Pop-11, Prolog, Common Lisp, and standard ML,
all incrementally compiled to the Poplog virtual machine, and from
there to machine code. (Other languages can be added using the

The Alphapop version reviewed in Byte, May 1988, is a subset that runs
only on the Mac at present.

Poplog Pop-11 requires a bigger machine and runs on the following systems

    VAX (VMS/Unix(4.2, 4.3)/Ultrix),
    Sun2, Sun3, Sun4(SPARC), Sun386i (Road-runner),
    HP 9000 300 series workstations with HPUX
    Apollo with Bsd Unix
    Sequent Symmetry with Dynix
    Orion 1/05 (with Clipper). This version is not supported at present

A port to DECstation 3100 with Ultrix should be completed late 1989. It
is also being ported to Mac II under A/UX.

The VMS version of Poplog accepts Unix file names to facilitate
portability of programs. An X windows interface should be available
early next year. (The existing poplog window manager runs only
on Sun and Vaxstation.)

Some literature on Pop-11.
R. Barrett, A. Ramsay and A. Sloman
    POP-11: A Practical Language for AI,
    Ellis Horwood and John Wiley, 1985, reprinted 1986.
    (Does not describe the current version, with full lexical
     scoping, "destroy" actions, etc.)
    French translation published by Manuels Informatiques Masson, 1987.

M. Burton, and N. Shadbolt,
    POP-11 Programming for Artificial Intelligence,
    Addison Wesley, 1987.

Gazdar, G., & C. Mellish
    Natural Language Processing in POP-11,
    Addison Wesley, 1989.
(Also available in Prolog, and in Common Lisp. The programming examples
are available on disk from The School of Cognitive and Computing
Sciences, Sussex University.)

Jonathan Laventhol,
    Programming in POP-11
    Blackwell, 1987
    (Describes the Alphapop subset of Pop-11)

Allan Ramsay and Rosalind Barrett,
    Artificial Intelligence in practice: examples in POP-11
    Ellis Horwood and John Wiley, 1987.

Mike Sharples, (editor) et al
    Computers and Thought,
    An introductory textbook on on AI, based largely on POP-11,
    1989, MIT Press.

James Anderson at Reading University has edited a collection of
essays on Pop (which is now 21 years old), to be published by
Ellis Horwood.

Alphapop is available from
    Cognitive Applications Ltd
    4 Sillwood Terrace
    Brighton BN1 2LR
    England

Poplog is sold commercially but is available to academics at a large
discount (approx 85%).

US and Canada Contact addresses for POPLOG (also Alphapop):

    Prof Robin Popplestone
    Dept. of Computer and Information Science
    Lederle Graduate Research Center
    University of Massachusetts
    Amherst, MA  01003, USA

Email pop at cs.umass.edu

or
    Prof Robin Popplestone
    Computable Functions Inc.,
    35 South Orchard Drive,
    Amherst, MA 01002, USA      Phone(413) 253-7637


Commercial sales and educational sales outside UK, Canada and USA

    Integral Solutions Ltd
    Unit 3, Campbell Court (maybe called Campbell House later)
    Bramley,
    Near Basingstoke,
    Hampshire,
    RG26 5EG
    Phone   +44 256 882028     Fax +44 256 882182

There are special arrangements for UK academics. Contact

    Ms Alison Mudd
    School of Cognitive Sciences
    University of Sussex
    Brighton, BN1 9QN           phone: 0273-606755
                                email: alim at uk.ac.sussex.cogs

Aaron Sloman
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences,
Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England
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