Editing Mary (programming language) (section)

{{more citations needed|date=August 2024}}
{{Infobox programming language
| name =Mary
| logo =
| paradigm = [[Imperative programming|imperative]]
| family = [[ALGOL]]
| developer =[[SINTEF|RUNIT]]
| released = {{Start date and age|1971}}<!-- If known, add |mm|dd|mf=yes -->
| latest_release_version = <!--{{Start date and age|198y|mm|dd|mf=yes}}-->
| latest release date =
| typing = [[static typing|static]], [[strong typing|strong]]
| implementations =
| influenced by = [[ALGOL 68]]
| influenced =
| operating system = [[Cross-platform]]: [[Kongsberg Defence Systems|Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk]] SM-4, [[Norsk Data]] Nord-10/ND-100, Univac-1100 series, [[Norsk Data|ND-100]]/[[Sintran]]-III, [[i386]], [[SPARC]]
| license =
| website =
| file ext =
}}
'''Mary''' is a [[programming language]] designed and implemented by Mark Rain<ref name="van der Meulen"/> at [[SINTEF|RUNIT]] in [[Trondheim]], [[Norway]] during the 1970s. It borrowed many features from [[ALGOL 68]] but was designed for [[systems programming]] (machine-oriented programming), with a subset of operations being reserved for higher-level usage.<ref name="gjessing"/>
 
An unusual feature of its syntax was that expressions were constructed using the conventional [[infix operator]]s, but all of them had the same precedence and evaluation went from left to right unless there were brackets.<ref name="maryassign"/> Assignment had the destination on the right and assignment was considered just another operator.

Similar to [[C (programming language)|C]], several language features appear to have existed to allow producing reasonably well optimised code, despite a quite primitive code generator in the compiler. These included operators similar to the <code>+=</code> ''et alter'' in C and explicit [[Processor register|register]] [[Declaration (computer programming)|declarations]] for [[Variable (computer science)|variables]].

Notable features:
* [[Dataflow]] syntax – values flow from left to right, including assignment
* Expression-based;<ref name="hills"/> most constructs could be used in expressions: blocks, IF, CASE, etc.
* Text-based recursive macros
* Overloaded user-defined operators, not constrained to predefined identifiers as in [[C++]]
* Automatic building and dereferencing of pointers from type context
* Scalar range types
* Array and set enumeration in loop iterators
* Dynamic array descriptors (ROW)

Compilers were made for [[Kongsberg Defence Systems|Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk]]'s SM-4 and [[Norsk Data]] Nord-10/ND-100 mini-computers. The original Mary compiler was written in NU [[ALGOL]], ran on the Univac-1100 series and was used to bootstrap a native compiler for [[Norsk Data|ND-100]]/[[Sintran]]-III. [[SINTEF|RUNIT]] implemented a [[CHILL]] compiler written in Mary which ran on ND-100 and had [[Intel 8086]] and [[Intel 80286|80286]] targets. When this compiler was ported to the [[VAX]] platform, a common backend for Mary and CHILL was implemented. Later, backends for [[i386]] and [[SPARC]] were available. Since the Mary compiler was implemented in Mary, it was possible to run the compiler on all these platforms. An improved version, Mary/2, was developed using a new compiler in the United States.<ref name="mary2"/>

Mary is no longer maintained.