Report Number: CS-TR-80-792
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: MAINSAIL implementation overview
Author: Wilcox, Clark R.
Author: Dageforde, Mary L.
Author: Jirak, Gregory A.
Date: March 1980
Abstract: The MAINSAIL programming language and the supporting implementations have been developed over the past five years as an integrated approach to a viable machine-independent system suitable for the development of large, portable programs. Particular emphasis has been placed on minimizing the effort involved in moving the system to a new machine and/or operating system. For this reason, almost all of the compiler and runtime support is written in MAINSAIL, and is utilized in each implementation without alteration. This use of a high-level language to support its own implementation has proved to be a significant advantage in terms of documentation and maintenance, without unduly affecting the execution speed. This paper gives an overview of the compiler and runtime implementation strategies, and indicates what an implementation requires for the machine-dependent and operating-system-dependent parts.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/80/792/CS-TR-80-792.pdf