On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 03:42:47PM +0200, arnt@??? wrote:
> M3 was great. Maybe the language I like best among the compiled
> ones. For example, the specification is just fifty and a half pages
> long, and it has 31-bit unsigned integers instead of 32.

I still use it.

It's still a decent language, with features specific to systems implementation.

>
> But don't use it. It is dead. No toolchain update in quite a few
> years any more, and the book is out of print. (Yes, I have a copy
> and I am keeping it.)

Not quite dead.

The developers are currently putting together the pieces for the next
major release.

It will have a code generator that generates C as well as th eusual
native code generators.

>
> Arnt


But now, for something completely different.

Try OCaml. There's a lot of networking software written in it, as it
happens, including, IIRC, the entire OCaml website.

The language is 20 years mature. I say mature rather than old, because
it hasn't been sitting still all those years. It's still under active
design aand development.

The bindings for various Unixy system libraries are done via a C
interface. It can be tricky for a beginner to implement a new one. But
it allready has tools for reading ane writing files, directories, etc.
Which might be what you need?

There is a steep learning curve.

And the language steald one bit out of every integer (so you end up with
31-bit integers and 63-bit integers on what would otherwise be 32 and 64
bit integers on 32 and 64-bit machines.

-- hendrik