DIBOL

DIBOL, short for Digital's Business Oriented Language, is a type of programming language that was created to help build software for managing information in businesses. It was developed between 1970 and 1993 to make it easier for computers to handle tasks related to business data.

This language works in a way that is similar to other older languages like FORTRAN and BASIC. It also uses a special kind of math called BCD arithmetic. DIBOL is special because it organizes programs into separate parts for data and for the steps the computer needs to follow, just like another language called COBOL.

One interesting feature of DIBOL is that it uses letters and numbers together for labels, unlike FORTRAN which only uses numbers. This made it easier to jump to different parts of a program in a flexible way.

History

DIBOL was first created and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1970. The first version, called DIBOL-8, worked on PDP-8 computers using the COS-300 system. Later, DIBOL-11 was made for the PDP-11 with the COS-350 system and could also run on other systems.

Official rules for DIBOL were released in 1983, 1988, and 1992. Development of DIBOL mostly stopped after 1993 when DEC agreed to replace it with DBL on newer systems like OpenVMS, Digital UNIX, and SCO Unix.