Everything this project knows about COMTRAN comes from two IBM manuals. Here they are in full: every page as it was scanned, with the text we read off it set beside it.
If a claim anywhere on this site makes you doubt it, check it here. Open the page it cites and look at the scan.
One copy, one reader
Each manual survives here as one scanned copy, and one reader has checked the text against it. Where a word on a scan is hard to make out, there is no second copy to settle it.
F28-8043 · June 1960
The language as IBM designed it: what a program looks like, what each verb does, and a complete payroll program worked through. Typeset, and written to introduce the language.
J28-6169 · January 1962
The language as the 1962 compiler accepted it, with every message the compiler could print and a complete compiled program. Where the two manuals disagree, this project follows this one.
These pages and PDFs are built from the repository each time the site is published, so they cannot drift from it.
Each page shows the scan on one side and the text read off it on the other. Select the scan to open it at full size.
The two manuals number their pages differently. F28-8043 prints a page
number, so it is cited as F p. 42. J28-6169 prints a section
code in the top corner of each page instead, so it is cited as
J 02.05.05. Every page also carries its place in the PDF,
which is the number in the scan’s file name.
A text-recognition program read each scan, and the text was then corrected against the scan, page by page. It keeps IBM’s spelling, mistakes included: a misspelling that matches the scan is IBM’s, and it stays. These pages show the transcription whole, with no mark added. Where the text and the scan disagree, the scan is right.
The manuals are IBM’s. The language reference is ours: one account of the whole language, built from both manuals, with every statement cited to the page it comes from. Select a citation and that page opens beside its scan.
Where the manuals leave a question open, the reference says so. Every answer in its catalogue of ambiguities (section 8.5) is a judgement call, labelled as one, and not a fact.
The reference pages are built the same way, from the copy the repository holds.