The Altran system for rational function manipulation — a survey

ABSTRACT

Altran is a complete system for symbolic computation with rational functions in several variables with integer coefficients. It has been designed and implemented to handle large problems with ease and efficiency. Considerable effort has been spent to ensure a minimum amount of machine dependence in the implementation, thus permitting the system to be installed quickly and easily on a variety of computing machines. In this paper a brief description of the language, run time data structures, and implementation is given.

REFERENCES

• 1: American National Standard X3.9-1966, FORTRAN. Amer. Nat. Standards Inst., New York, 1966.
• 2: Brown, W.S. ALTRAN Revisited. Jan. 1969, unpublished, 53 pp.
• 3: PL/I language specifications. Form C28-6571.-4, IBM Syst. Ref. Library.
• 4: Brown, W.S., Hyde, J.P., and Tague, B.A. The ALPAK system for nonnumerical algebra on a digital computer. Bell Syst. Tech J. 42 (1963), 2081-2119; 43 (1964), 785-894; 43 (1964), 1547-1562.
• 5: Donald E. Knuth, The art of computer programming, volume 2 (3rd ed.): seminumerical algorithms, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1997
• 6: Brown, W.S. On Euclid's Algorithm and the Computation of Greatest Common Divisors. In preparation.
• 7: Hall, A.D. A "Portable" FORTRAN IV Subset. Sept. 26, 1969, unpublished, 9 pp.
• 8: Hall, A.D. The M Macro Processor. Mar. 21, 1969, unpublished, 17 pp., 1 app.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
interpreters, polynomial manipulation, rational function manipulation, symbolic algebra, translators