Occam (programming language): Difference between revisions

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'''occam''' is a [[programming language]] which is [[Concurrent computing|concurrent]] and builds on the [[communicating sequential processes]] (CSP) process algebra,<ref name="oc21refman">{{cite book |author=<!--Must be person--> |author-link=Inmos |url=http://www.wotug.org/occam/documentation/oc21refman.pdf |title=occam 2.1 Reference Manual |publisher=SGS-Thomson Microelectronics Ltd |date=1995-05-12}} Inmos document 72 occ 45 03</ref> and shares many of its features. It is named after philosopher [[William of Ockham]] after whom [[Occam's razor]] is named.

occamOccam is an [[Imperative programming|imperative]] [[Procedural programming|procedural]] language (such as [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]]). It was developed by [[David May (computer scientist)|David May]] and others at [[Inmos]] (trademark INMOS), advised by [[Tony Hoare]], as the native programming language for their [[transputer]] [[microprocessor]]s, but implementations for other platforms are available. The most widely known version is occam 2; its programming manual was written by Steven Ericsson-Zenith and others at [[Inmos]].

==Overview==

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===occam 1===

''occam 1''<ref name="oc1refman">{{cite book |author=<!--Must be person--> |author-link=Inmos |title=occam Programming Manual |publisher=Prentice-Hall |year=1984 |isbn=0-13-629296-8}}</ref> (released 1983) was a preliminary version of the language which borrowed from [[David May (computer scientist)|David May]]'s work on EPL and Tony Hoare's CSP. This supported only the VAR [[data type]], which was an integral type corresponding to the native word length of the target architecture, and arrays of only one dimension.

===occam 2===

''occam 2''<ref name="oc2refman">{{cite book |last=Ericsson-Zenith |first=Steven |title=occam 2 Reference Manual |publisher=Prentice-Hall |year=1988 |isbn=0-13-629312-3}}</ref> is an extension produced by Inmos Ltd in 1987 that adds [[floating-point]] support, functions, multi-dimensional arrays and more data types such as varying sizes of integers (INT16, INT32) and bytes.

With this revision, occam became a language able to express useful programs, whereas occam 1 was more suited to examining algorithms and exploring the new language (however, the occam 1 [[compiler]] was written in occam 1,<ref name="cook1">{{cite conference |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nvnnZtJWAZkC&q=architectures+languages+and+techniques+barry+cook |title= Occam on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays |last1=Cook |first1=Barry M |last2=Peel |first2=RMA |date=1999-04-11 |conference=22nd World Occam and Transputer User Group Technical Meeting |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Barry M. |book-title=Architectures, Languages and Techniques for Concurrent Systems |publisher=IOS Press |___location=Keele, United Kingdom |isbn= 90-5199-480-X |page=219 |access-date=2016-11-28}}</ref> so there is an existence proof that reasonably sized, useful programs could be written in occam 1, despite its limits).

===occam 2.1===

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*Named records

*Packed records

*Relaxation of some of the [[type conversion]] rules

*New operators (e.g. BYTESIN)

*Channel retyping and channel arrays