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Preface
Background
Persons familiar with the history of programming will realize that the development of the Commercial Translator system is a logical step in the evolution of programming systems. The step from machine language coding to symbolic coding systems such as those for the IBM 702 and 705 was a natural and relatively simple development. With the introduction of "SOAP" for the IBM 650, "SAP" for the 704 and "Autocoder" for the 705, it became possible to write programs using English language words or abbreviations instead of symbolic numbers. A parallel development was the concept of writing one synthetic instruction, i.e., a macro-instruction, to represent several machine operations. Several systems at this level of development are a combination of the "one-for-one" coding of symbolic languages and the "several-for-one" coding of macros. Although these systems greatly simplify programming, they are all essentially machine-oriented; that is, the programmer must think in terms of the operation repertory of the particular machine. A highly significant step occurred with the advent of compilers such as FORTRAN. For the first time, coding systems were designed in terms of the language of the problem to be coded instead of in terms of a specific data processing system. The FORTRAN language is used to formulate mathematical problems for several data processing systems. It naturally preceded the development of the Commercial Translator system since it is directly related to the language of mathematics, the forms of which are accepted universally. Now, with Commercial Translator, a problem-oriented language becomes available for the formulation of commercial problems.
Concerning this Manual
The primary purpose of this manual is to present the Commercial Translator system in sufficient detail to permit the programming of applications in its language. Certain information is omitted: Separate publications will describe the operation of the processors, i.e., the programs for each data processing system which translate the Commercial Translator language into the machine language of that particular system. These publications will also cover the rules for stating environment description, which is the portion of a Commercial Translator program that specifies the available components of the data processing system and the external characteristics of the files to be processed.