UNCOL

UNCOL (Universal Computer Oriented Language) is a universal intermediate language for compilers. The idea was introduced in 1958, by a SHARE ad-hoc committee.[1] It was never fully specified or implemented; in many ways it was more a concept than a language.

UNCOL was intended to make compilers economically available for each new instruction set architecture and programming language, thereby reducing an N×M problem to N+M.[2] Each machine architecture would require just one compiler back end, and each programming language would require one compiler front end. This was a very ambitious goal because compiler technology was in its infancy, and little was standardized in computer hardware and software.

  1. ^ Strong, J.; Wegstein, J.; Tritter, A.; Olsztyn, J.; Mock, O.; Steel, T. (August 1958). "The Problem of Programming Communication with Changing Machines: A Proposed Solution". Communications of the ACM. 1 (8): 12–18. doi:10.1145/368892.368915. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  2. ^ John Levine (23 November 2021). "UNCOL and Reversing modifications from mailing lists". dmarc-ietf (Mailing list). Retrieved 24 November 2021.