sml-family.org

In his blog, Bob Harper, in joint effort with Dave MacQueen and Lars Bergstrom, announces the launch of sml-family.org:

The Standard ML Family project provides a home for online versions of various formal definitions of Standard ML, including the "Definition of Standard ML, Revised" (Standard ML 97). The site also supports coordination between different implementations of the Standard ML (SML) programming language by maintaining common resources such as the documentation for the Standard ML Basis Library and standard test suites. The goal is to increase compatibility and resource sharing between Standard ML implementations.

The site includes a history section devoted to the history of ML, and of Standard ML in particular. This section will contain a collection of original source documents relating to the design of the language.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

I am not sure I understand

I am not sure I understand the description of VAX ML in the Luca Fest paper. Footnote 4 reads: "Since the entire system was written in Pascal, there was no sharp distinction between the compiler and the runtime, which was simply the part of the system responsible for executing the abstract machine instructions (FAM code)." I don't see why there is no sharp distinction. Regardless, the next sentence in the paper reads: "The compiler generated VAX machine code". This seems to be inconsistent with the footnote. I presume I got the different compilers referred to mixed up, but I think this bit of the text should be clarified.

early 1980s UNIX ML (VAX ML or Cardelli ML) found

Hi Ehud, this is a belated reply to your question of several years ago. I think can partly answer your question since with the help of Dave MacQueen we have successfully located a copy of VAX ML (aka UNIX ML or Cardelli ML).

Here are screenshots of a session of UNIX ML running on 4.1 BSD UNIX emulation:

https://i.imgur.com/dhkl9lS.png
https://i.imgur.com/aR0m04Z.png
https://i.imgur.com/dhkl9lS.png

UNIX ML was an incremental compiler and running the ML executable compiled (to VAX machine code) and executed any ML passed to it.

My aim is to find everything on the diagram below and place the whole lot in a git repo:
https://imgur.com/7p8CznJ