META II

META II is a domain-specific programming language for writing compilers. It was created in 1963-1964 by Dewey Val Schorre at UCLA. META II uses what Schorre called syntax equations. Its operation is simply explained as: Each syntax equation is translated into a recursive subroutine which tests the input string for a particular phrase structure, and deletes it if found.The paper itself is a wonderful gem which includes a number of excellent examples, including the bootstrapping of Meta II in itself (all this was done on an 8K (six bit byte) 1401!).'—Alan KayMETA II is not presented as a standard language, but as a point of departure from which a user may develop his own META 'language'.The term META 'language' with META in capital letters is used to denote any compiler-writing language so developed. META II is a domain-specific programming language for writing compilers. It was created in 1963-1964 by Dewey Val Schorre at UCLA. META II uses what Schorre called syntax equations. Its operation is simply explained as: Meta II programs are compiled into an interpreted byte code language. VALGOL and SMALGOL compilers illustrating its capabilities were written in the META II language, VALGOL is a simple algebraic language designed for the purpose of illustrating META II. SMALGOL was a fairly large subset of ALGOL 60. META II was first written in META I, a hand-compiled version of META II. The history is unclear as to whether META I was a full implementation of META II or a required subset of the META II language required to compile the full META II compiler. In its documentation, META II is described as resembling BNF. BNF today is explained as a production grammar. META II is an analytical grammar. In the TREE-META document these languages were described as reductive grammars.