BCPL: a tool for compiler writing and system programming

Abstract

The language BCPL (Basic CPL) was originally developed as a compiler writing tool and as its name suggests it is closely related to CPL (Combined Programming Language) which was jointly developed at Cambridge and London Universities. BCPL adopted much of the syntactic richness of CPL and strived for the same high standard of linguistic elegance; however, in order to achieve the efficiency necessary for system programming its scale and complexity is far less than that of CPL. The most significant simplification is that BCPL has only one data type---the binary bit pattern---and this feature alone gives BCPL a characteristic flavour which is very different of that of CPL and most other current programming languages.