<language> (Note lower case) A language based on Anthony
Hoare's CSP and EPL. Named after the English
philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) who propounded
Occam's Razor. The occam language was designed by David May
of INMOS to easily describe concurrent processes which
communicate via one-way channels. It was developed to run on
the INMOS transputer but compilers are available for
VAX, Sun and Intel MDS, inter alia.
The basic entity in occam is the process of which there are
four fundamental types, assignment, input, output, and wait.
More complex processes are constructed from these using SEQ to
specify sequential execution, PAR to specify parallel
execution and ALT where each process is associated with an
input from a channel. The process whose channel inputs first
is executed. The fourth constructor is IF with a list of
conditions and associated processes. The process executed is
the one with the first true condition in textual order. There
is no operator precedence.
The original occam is now known as "occam 1". It was extended
to produce occam 2.
Simulator for VAX.
Tahoe mailing list: <occam@sutcase.case.syr.edu>.
[David May et al, 1982. "Concurrent algorithms"].
["Occam", D. May, SIGPLAN Notices 18(4):69-79, 1983].
