Compiling connectives
Charles J. Swift · Communications of the ACM · 1960
The connectives “and”, “or” and their alternatives can be used to connect words, phrases or clauses in natural English. In the specifications for the FACT language for the Honeywell 800 (1) , authors attempted to include as many of these uses as possible while still retaining simple rules as to what was allowable. The compiler operates on connectives by expanding the original source statements, using repetitions, until there has been generated an equivalent statement in which the connectives connect only complete conditional or imperative clauses. This paper describes the methods employed by the compiler for part of this expansion.