Wikipedia: COWSEL programming language

COWSEL programming language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

COWSEL is the COntrolled Working SpacE Language. Between 1964 and 1966, it was designed and implemented by Robin Popplestone, initially on a Ferranti Pegasus computer at the University of Leeds and on a Stantec Zebra at the Bradford Institute of Technology; later with Rod Burstall on an Elliot 4120 at the University of Edinburgh. It was based on a reverse Polish form of Lisp combined with some ideas from CPL. In the summer of 1966 it was renamed POP-1 and development continued under that name.

Example Code

function member
lambda x y
comment Is x a member of list y;
define      y atom then *0 end
            y hd x equal then *1 end
            y tl -> y repeat up

Reference

Technical report: EPU-R-12, U Edinburgh (Apr 1966).

External link

http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/~pop/pop_development.html --The Early Development of POP