🚀 go-pugleaf

You can obtain information on Modula-3 (the Report as well as a compiler that
produces reasonably portable C code for Modula-3 programs; this compiler has
been made to run on a number of popular machines) from gatekeeper.dec.com via
anonymous FTP. Look under the pub tree and you'll find it. Note the license
agreement; it is liberable, but you should check its terms against your
situation.

Modula-3 is similar to Modula-2, but not precisely an extension. It adds
object types in a single inheritance hierarchy, true garbage collection (and
an allocate/free mechanism, too), exceptions and handlers, and threads
(lightweight concurrent processes in the same address space). It eliminates
variant records (object subtypes are nicer) and nested modules, and has a
different opaque type mechanism, integrated with object types.

We are working on a quality optimizing compiler for it, based on gcc, to be
offered for public consumption through the Free Software Foundation under the
terms of the GNU Public License. It should be ready sometime in 1991.

Oberon adds extensible records to Modula-2, but I understand Oberon to be more
of an effort to make a "minimal" language, whereas Modula-3 did not try to
strip down to minimal features and caters a bit more to convenience and
systems programming. (This is necessarily an opinion; I prefer M3, but there
are those who prefer Oberon.) Perhaps someone else will post a resposne
indicating where to learn more about Oberon.
--

		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
		Department of Computer and Information Science
		Lederle Graduate Research Center
		University of Massachusetts
		Amherst, MA  01003
		(413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu