Alef (Programmiersprache)
The Alef programming language was designed by Phil Winterbottom of Bell Labs as part of the Plan 9 operating system.
In a February 2000 slideshow, Rob Pike noted: "…although Alef was a fruitful language, it proved too difficult to maintain a variant language across multiple architectures, so we took what we learned from it and built the thread library for C."
Example
This example was taken from [1]. The piece illustrates the use of Tuple data type.
(int, byte*, byte)
func()
{
return (10, "hello", ’c’);
}
void
main()
{
int a;
byte* str;
byte c;
(a, str, c) = func();
}
See also
- Limbo - A direct successor of Alef. The Limbo programming language is the most commonly used language in the Inferno operating system.
- Plan 9 from Bell Labs - The original environment where Alef was developed.
Trivia
- Alef is purported to be Dennis Ritchie's favorite programming language.
References
- Phil Winterbottom: Plan 9 Programmer's Manual: Volume Two. AT&T, Murray Hill 1995, Alef Language Reference Manual.
- Bob Flandrena: Plan 9 Programmer's Manual: Volume Two. AT&T, Murray Hill 1995, Alef Users' Guide.
- Phil Winterbottom: Plan9 VM. In: comp.os.research (Google Groups).
- TLC Hackers' Hall of Fame