This is a port to V7/x86 of a BCPL compiler from the Tripos Research Group at Cambridge University. The compiler available here is very close to that featured in the book: BCPL -- the language and its compiler by Martin Richards and Colin Whitby-Stevens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

BCPL was first implemented by Martin Richards when he was visiting MIT in 1967, and was a popular and widely-used systems programming language during the 1970s and 1980s. At Bell Labs during the early days of UNIX, it directly inspired the computer language B, which in turn gave rise to the immensely successful C programming language.

What particularly impresses about BCPL is the portability of the system and the elegant simplicity of its compiler. Through the use of INTCODE, a simple assembly language for an abstract BCPL machine, the problem of bringing up the compiler on a new platform is reduced to that of coding an interpreter in some available high level language. Such a task may take only a day or two.

The present port includes both an INTCODE interpreter and an INTCODE to x86 native code generator. You can download the distribution file or take a look at a sample BCPL program.

BCPL is still a living language and has evolved considerably since the 1970s. Language designer Martin Richards has a current BCPL compiler and language manual together with BCPL programs and archive material available from his home page.