WATBOL is a teaching

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 tha ...

for the COBOL

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

developed in 1969 at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

. The compiler was a companion product, built under the design philosophy, of Waterloo’s earlier, widely used

WATFOR WATFIV, or WATerloo FORTRAN IV, developed at the University of Waterloo, Canada is an implementation of the Fortran computer programming language. It is the successor of WATFOR. WATFIV was used from the late 1960s into the mid-1980s. WATFIV was ...

teaching compiler. Since programs written by undergraduate students were unlikely to be run more than a few times, after they were successfully written and debugged, the efficiency of the program, once compiled was of secondary importance, compared with giving simpler, clearer error messages, and in simplifying the steps for the student to compile the program. At that time executing a program through the use of commercial compiler was a three-step process. First the Fortran, or COBOL, had to be

compiled 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 ...

into assembly language, then the assembly language had to be assembled into binary code; finally the compiled and assembled code had to be linked with previously written libraries of subroutines. WATFOR and WATBOL allowed simple programs to be compiled, linked, and executed in a single step. In 1982 Carol Vogt wrote that 230 other institutions were using WATBOL. {{cite news , url = https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/40th/Chronology/printable.shtml , title = Unbundling Computing at The University of Waterloo , publisher =

, author1 = Harold Alkema , author2 = Kenneth McLaughlin , date = 2007 , access-date = 2012-12-18 , archive-date = 2012-09-12 , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120912212607/https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/40th/Chronology/printable.shtml , url-status = dead , quote = The Department of Computing Services (DCS) newsletter noted that there were 420 institutions using WATFIV, 230 using WATBOL, and 370 using DCS's SCRIPT, all software products constructed by UW.

References

Test items Compilers