Pop-2 documents

Pop-2 was a programming language initially developed in the late 1960s at the University of Edinburgh as a general purpose programming language especially suitable for Artificial Intelligence programming.

Pop-11, now part of the Poplog system, is still recognisably a descendant of Pop-2.

Because Poplog is still in use, it is easy to get the source code and documentation for Poplog. However, if you want to understand surviving code in Pop-2, like Max Bramer's RMYCIN system, you want Pop-2 documentation.

This is all the Pop-2 documentation I have been able to find. If anyone knows of other documentation, I would love to add it to this list. I would particularly like to see "Pop-2 in Pop-2" and WonderPop.

• The Pop-2 papers.
• The manual for Bill Clocksin's Poppy system.
• Programming in Pop-2, by Burstall, Collins, and Popplestone. This is a scan I did myself, with a machine that doesn't like sending entire books by e-mail, and doesn't recognise the book's size as a possible paper size. However, the scan is legible. This is provided with the permission of Edinburgh University Press and Rod Burstall.
  1. The primer, first half. This is an updated version of the primer in the Pop-2 papers.
  2. The primer, second half. A supplement to the primer and an index are in the last part of the book.
  3. The Reference Manual. This is an updated version of the reference manual in the Pop-2 papers. A supplement to the reference manual and an index are in the last part of the book.
  4. The library, first part. The library includes descriptions and listings.
  5. The library, second part.
  6. The library, third part.
  7. The last part of the library, some supplementary material describing backtracking, and the indices.
• POP-10 User's Manual, by D. J. M. Davies, 29 May 1976. This is the manual for POP-10, a Pop-2 system developed after the Silver Book and running on the DEC-10 under TOPS-10.
• THE POP-10 SYSTEM EDITOR — The "PED" Editor, by D. J. M. Davies, 1 April 1976. This is the manual for the text editor built into POP-10, derived from the 77-Editor by Boyer and Moore.

  These two reports are both copyright 1976 D. J. M. Davies, the Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, and are provided here by permission. Thanks to Dianne McFadzean who located and copied them, and the Department Chair, who gave permission.

• The Unix Pop-2 System manual written and provided by William Clocksin. This system crammed a lot in an impressively small space and worked impressively well. Sadly, the source code has been lost.

The Silver Book was published at a point where a 'while' loop (using the keyword 'loopif'; this was before 'while' had become generally popular) had been added to the language, but the library had not yet been revised to use it, so the library makes much use of labels and gotos. As far as I am aware, all of the library files can easily be modified to use loops instead of gotos. Indeed, as a WonderPop user, I had completely forgotten that there was a goto in the language.

The influence of Pop-2 has been more than you might imagine. Traces of Pop-2 syntax can still be found in Standard ML, in Prolog, and in Erlang.