Babbage (programming language)

Babbage

Paradigm	procedural, structured, High-level assembler
First appeared	around 1971
Stable release	308
OS	COS, GEC DOS, OS4000
Influenced by
BCPL

Babbage is the high level assembly language for the GEC 4000 series minicomputers.^[1] It was named after Charles Babbage, an English computing pioneer.

Example

PROCESS CHAPTER FACTORIAL

ENTRY LABEL ENTRYPOINT

LITERAL TO = 4                              // Assume using the default proforma

EXTERNAL ROUTINE
     OPEN,
     PUT,
     CLOSE,
     TOCHAR

VECTOR [0,19] OF BYTE ANSWER = "factorial x = xxxxxx"
 
HALF COUNT
HALF VALUE
FULL RESULT

//******************************************************************************

     ROUTINE FACT(VALUE)
     // return factorial of RA.

     VALUE => RESULT

     WHILE DECREMENT VALUE GT //0// DO
     <<
          RESULT * VALUE => RESULT
     >>
     RETURN(RESULT)
     END

//******************************************************************************

ENTRYPOINT:

     OPEN(TO, 1)

     // Print factorials for numbers 1 through 9
     1 => RA
     REPEAT
     <<
          RA => COUNT
          FACT(RA) => RA
          TOCHAR(RA, 7, ANSWER + 13)
          TOCHAR(COUNT, 2, ANSWER + 9)
          PUT(TO, 20, ANSWER)
          COUNT + 1 => RA
     >>
     WHILE RA LT 10

     CLOSE(TO)
     STOP(0)
     END

//******************************************************************************

See also

• GEC 4000 series
• OS4000

References

1. Salomon, David (1992). Assemblers and Loaders. Ellis Horwood. pp. 184–185. ISBN 0-13-052564-2.