Modula-2+

Modula-2 is a structured, procedural programming language developed between 1977 and 1985/8 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. It was created as the language for the operating system and application software of the Lilith personal workstation. It was later used for programming outside the context of the Lilith. Wirth viewed Modula-2 as a successor to his earlier programming languages Pascal and Modula. The main concepts are: # The module as a compiling unit for separate compiling # The coroutine as the basic building block for concurrent processes # Types and procedures that allow access to machine-specific data The language design was influenced by the Mesa language and the Xerox Alto, both from Xerox PARC, that Wirth saw during his 1976 sabbatical year there. The computer magazine Byte devoted the August 1984 issue to the language and its surrounding environment. Wirth created the Oberon series of languages as the successor to Modula-2, while others (particularly at Digital Equipment Corporation and Acorn Computers, later Olivetti) developed Modula-2 into Modula-2+ and later Modula-3.

Modula-2+ is a programming language descended from the Modula-2 language. It was developed at DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) and Acorn Computers Ltd Research Centre in Palo Alto, California. Modula-2+ is Modula-2 with exceptions and threads. The group which developed the language was led by P. Rovner in 1984. Main differences with Modula-2: Concurrency; different than the concept of coroutine, which was already part of Modula-2 Exception handling Garbage collection

Implementations

Modula-2+ was used to develop Topaz, an operating system for the SRC DEC Firefly shared memory asymmetric multiprocessing workstation. Most Topaz applications were written in Modula-2+, which grew along with the development of the system. Modula-2+ was also used by Acorn in the ARX operating system, and to build an integrated development environment in the Acorn Research Center (ARC). Modula-2+ strongly influenced other languages such as Modula-3, but as of 2005, it had disappeared. The original developers of Modula-2+ were both acquired: Acorn by Olivetti and Digital Equipment Corporation by Compaq. Compaq was bought by Hewlett-Packard. Olivetti sold the Olivetti Research Center and Olivetti Software Technology Laboratory (after bought Acorn ARC) to Oracle Corporation and was later absorbed by AT&T. DEC have made the SRC-reports available to the public.

See also

Modula

References

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