Maentwrog

A programming language in the genre of pedagogical language by Chris Pressey, ca 1993

Esowiki: Maentwrog

Maentwrog is an RPN-calculator-turned-FORTH-interpreter which probably counts as Chris Pressey's first proper programming language. It was implemented on his Amiga 500 in 1993, then lost and unearthed multiple times. It is hardly remarkable, save that it spawned Befunge-93.

Sample Program

*a *b *c
0 =a 1 =b
: fib a b + =c c . b =a c =b c 100000 < @fib ;
1 . fib

Computational Class

known not Turing-complete

Programming Paradigms

Documentation

Implementations

  • maentw.c, an interpreter in ANSI C

    To run this implementation, you need:

    • to build it first, for which you will need:

Download

Download latest release (1.1-2011.0426)

Development

Github: catseye/Maentwrog

Bitbucket: catseye/maentwrog

Issue tracker: on github

Previous Releases

Influenced

Commentary

There are no extant example programs from the time the language was first implemented — I tried writing the Sieve of Eratosthenes in it once, but never got it to work, probably because == was not implemented correctly. Recently, example programs and a description of the language (which has become the provisional spec) have been provided by Marinus — thanks Marinus!

Maentwrog is the name of a town in Wales, but the usage of its name for this language came via Douglas Adams' "The Meaning of Liff", wherein it is defined thusly: "MAENTWROG (n. Welsh) Celtic word for a computer spelling mistake."