The development of Algol played an important role in establishing computer science as an academic discipline. The SourceForge Algol 68 project preserves and promotes Algol 68 by making available open source Algol 68 implementations and documentation. Currently, two implementations are available from this project:
• Algol 68 Genie (a68g) is
a mature interpreter written from scratch by Marcel van der Veer. It ranks among the most complete
Algol 68 implementations. It implements arbitrary precision arithmetic,
parallel processing, partial parametrisation and formatted transput, and supports curses, regular
expressions and sounds. It can be linked to GNU plotutils, the GNU scientific library, R mathlib and PostgreSQL.
Algol 68 Genie is free software released under GNU GPLv3.
• algol68toc is a port of those parts of vintage ALGOL68RS that were made available as ctrans with DRA Malvern's ELLA package. A notable unpublished part is formatted transput. Since ALGOL68RS was a one-pass compiler, algol68toc puts restrictions on Algol 68. This port is currently maintained by Neil Matthew.
• A third independent project, started in 2025, is the GNU Algol 68 compiler ga68 which is an Algol 68 front end for GCC. Its parser is derived from the Algol 68 Genie parser. The front end was released with GCC 16.1 in April, 2026.
Project team
• Algol 68 Genie author and maintainer: Marcel van der
Veer.
• Package builder: Neville Dempsey.
Further information
• Algol 68 code samples at Rosetta Code
• Software Preservation Group Algol implementations page
• Dick Grune's website with legacy Algol 68 data
• LinkedIn Algol 68 professional group
• IFIP Working Group 2.1
• Algol 68 on Wikipedia
