New Executive Programming Language (NEWP) is a

high-level programming language In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language with strong Abstraction (computer science), abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ...

used on computers running the

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions, e ...

operating system ''

Master Control Program The MCP (Master Control Program) is the operating system of the Burroughs small, medium and large systems, including the Unisys Clearpath/MCP systems. MCP was originally written in 1961 in ESPOL (Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language). In ...

'' (MCP). The language is used to write the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

and other system

utility software Utility software is software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit ord ...

, though it can also be used to write user software. Several constructs separate it from extended

ALGOL ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

on which it is based. Language operators such as MEMORY which allows direct memory access are strictly used by programs running as the MCP. NEWP replaced Burroughs

Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language The Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language (ESPOL) is a programming language, a superset of ALGOL 60, that provides abilities of what would later be termed a '' system programming language'' or ''machine oriented high order language'' (mohol), ...

(ESPOL)

Main constructs

NEWP is a block-structured language very similar to Extended ALGOL. It includes several features borrowed from other programming languages which help in proper software engineering. These include modules (and later, super-modules) which group together functions and their data, with defined import and export interfaces. This allows for data encapsulation and module integrity. Since NEWP is designed for use as an operating system language, it permits the use of several unsafe constructs. Each block of code can have specific unsafe elements permitted. Unsafe elements are those only permitted within the operating system. These include access to the tag of each word, access to arbitrary memory elements, low-level machine interfaces, etc. If a program does not make use of any unsafe elements, it can be compiled and executed by anyone. If any unsafe elements are used, the

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

marks the code as non-executable. It can still be executed if blessed by a security administrator.

Folklore

NEWP is rumored to really stand for "Nearly Every Word

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

" after a West coast engineering initiative to move Burroughs languages such as ALGOL over to a more Pascal-like syntax. Stories were also told that it stands for "No Executive Washroom Privileges," supposedly after its designers fell out of favor with management. Alternately, NEWP was chosen as the name of the compiler/language at the spur of the moment, by the designer, when pressed for a name under which the compiler code would be managed. It stood for "NEW Programming language", an essentially dull name, with the unhappy property that the "new" part of the name would quickly become incorrect. The original designer of the project was a Texan and soon started to describe the name as the answer to the question, "Is it done yet?". NEWP sounded like a West Texas version of "nope". Once the project was released, the name was "redefined" to stand for "No Executive Washroom Privileges" - a description of the type of person who would likely use the language. For a while a contest ran to come up with a better name for the compiler and language, but by that time the name NEWP had sunk its roots too deeply.

References

{{Prog-lang-stub ALGOL 60 dialect Systems programming languages Procedural programming languages

Main constructs

Folklore

See also

References