Top (GNU Algol 68 Coding Guidelines)

## Short Table of Contents

## Table of Contents

# Introduction ¶

This document contains a set of conventions and recommendations for writing Algol 68 code which is part of `ga68`, the GNU Algol 68 compiler. As with any coding conventions, the goal is to achieve a coherent style among the code base.

Algol 68 is probably the programming language with the most carefully and lovingly designed syntax ever made. It can be verbose when it is convenient for the programmer, and also extremely compact while keeping an astounding high level of readability. These conventions aim to make a good use of that.

Feel free to adopt our guidelines for your own Algol 68 project, partially or entirely.

In what follows we make extensive use of Algol 68 terminology, which may be confusing at first for the uninitiated reader. The Algol 68 Jargon File provides definitions for many of the terms used in the context of the Algol 68 programming language and associated technologies. If you find yourself wondering about "frobyts" or "enclosed clauses", please look them up in the jargon file1. The file is available online in the www and, in Gentoo, as manpages once you install the app-doc/a68-jargon package. Just type `man 7algol frobyt` in the terminal, for example.

Additionally, in this document we use the term "space" and "spaces" to refer to "typographical display features", i.e. spaces, tabs and newlines. These characters are of no significance and do not alter the meaning of the program when they appear between symbols, outside of string and character denotations, but they have a great impact on the readability of the code and are the main tool for formatting.

#### Footnotes

##### (1)

https://jemarch.net/a68-jargon/