Paradigms | imperative, structured, modular, data and procedure hiding, concurrent |
---|---|
Family | Wirth/Modula |
Designed by | Niklaus Wirth |
First appeared | 1978 |
Typing discipline | Static, strong, safe |
Scope | Lexical (static) |
Platform | Lilith (AMD 2901) |
OS | Cross-platform |
Filename extensions | .mod, .m2, .def, .MOD, .DEF, .mi, .md |
Website | www |
Major implementations | |
ETH compiler written by Niklaus Wirth GNU Modula-2 ADW Modula-2 | |
Dialects | |
PIM2, PIM3, PIM4, ISO | |
Influenced by | |
Modula, Mesa, Pascal, ALGOL W, Euclid | |
Influenced | |
Modula-2+, Modula-3, Oberon, Ada, Fortran 90, Lua, Seed7, Zonnon, Modula-GM |
Modula-2 is a structured, procedural programming language developed between 1977 and 1985/8 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. It was created as the language for the operating system and application software of the Lilith personal workstation.[1] It was later used for programming outside the context of the Lilith.
Wirth viewed Modula-2 as a successor to his earlier programming languages Pascal and Modula.[2][3] The main concepts are:
The language design was influenced by the Mesa language and the Xerox Alto, both from Xerox PARC, that Wirth saw during his 1976 sabbatical year there.[4] The computer magazine Byte devoted the August 1984 issue to the language and its surrounding environment.[5]
Wirth created the Oberon series of languages as the successor to Modula-2, while others (particularly at Digital Equipment Corporation and Acorn Computers, later Olivetti) developed Modula-2 into Modula-2+ and later Modula-3.