SYMPL was a programming language developed by the Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....

 for use on the CDC 6000 series

CDC 6000 series

The CDC 6000 series was a family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which all were extremely rapid and efficient for their time...

 computer systems in the 1970s and 1980s. It was based on a subset of CDCs version of JOVIAL

JOVIAL

JOVIAL is a high-order computer programming language similar to ALGOL, but specialized for the development of embedded systems .JOVIAL is an acronym for "Jules Own Version of the International...

, as an alternative to assembly language

COMPASS

COMPASS is an acronym for COMPrehensive ASSembler. COMPASS is any of a family of macro assembly languages on Control Data Corporation's 3000 series, and on the 60-bit CDC 6000 series, 7600 and Cyber 70 and 170 series mainframe computers...

. A number of important CDC software products were implemented in SYMPL, including compilers, libraries, a full-screen editor, and major subsystems.

SYMPL was a compiled, imperative

Imperative programming

In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state...

, and procedural

Procedural programming

Procedural programming can sometimes be used as a synonym for imperative programming , but can also refer to a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call...

 language. Compared to Fortran

Fortran

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...

 of the day, SYMPL supported:

• Stronger data typing - All variables must be declared prior to use,
• Data structures - Including "based" dynamically allocated structures,
• Structured programming
  Structured programming
  Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed on improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of subroutines, block structures and for and while loops - in contrast to using simple tests and jumps such as the goto statement which could...
  
   constructs,
• Nested procedures
  Nested function
  In computer programming, a nested function is a function which is lexically encapsulated within another function. It can only be called by the enclosing function or by functions directly or indirectly nested within the same enclosing function. In other words, the scope of the nested function is...
  
  ,
• In-fix "bead" (bit) and character manipulation
• A simple macro facility

Simplifications compared to JOVIAL

JOVIAL

JOVIAL is a high-order computer programming language similar to ALGOL, but specialized for the development of embedded systems .JOVIAL is an acronym for "Jules Own Version of the International...

 included: fewer built-in data types, no recursive

Recursion

Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...

calls to procedures, and no COMPOOL concept.

External links

• Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer program - written in SYMPL
• SYMPL coding standard
• SYMPL Reference Manual
• SYMPL Users Guide