NAME

       mixal - a load-and-go MIX assembler

SYNOPSIS

       mixal [ file ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       Mixal  is  an  implementation  of  the hypothetical MIX computer and its assembly language
       called MIXAL.  The computer was designed by Donald Knuth for use in his monumental and yet
       to  be  finished  book  series  The  Art  of  Computer  Programming.  All programs and all
       programming exercises in the book are written in the MIXAL language.

       This implementation is a load-and-go assembler, meaning that you provide it with  a  MIXAL
       program  source,  which it translates into MIX machine code, which it promptly executes by
       acting as a MIX emulator.

       You give Mixal zero or more program source files in the command line,  which  the  program
       interprets.   If  you  give  it no arguments, it expects to find a program in the standard
       input stream.  After the program has executed, the final state of  the  machine  registers
       are printed to the standard output stream.

       The  card  punch  and  line printer devices are connected to the standard input and output
       stream, respectively.  Console input and  output  are  connected  to  standard  input  and
       output,  and the disk devices are connected to files named diskN in the current directory,
       where N is the device number.  Those files are created on demand.

BUGS

       This  MIXAL  implementation  does  not  do  floating-point.   The  tape  devices  are  not
       implemented.

AUTHOR

       This  MIXAL  implementation  was  designed and written by Darius Bacon, and then ported to
       Unixish systems and debugged by Eric S. Raymond.  This  version  includes  corrections  to
       multiplication  and  division by Larry Gately.  This manual page was written for Debian by
       Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, with changes by Darius Bacon.

SEE ALSO

       The files  /usr/share/doc/mixal/READ.ME  and  /usr/share/doc/mixal/NOTES.gz  contain  some
       information     about     this     MIXAL     implementation.      Be    sure    to    read
       /usr/share/doc/mixal/README.Debian, too.

       A description of the MIX system and the MIXAL language can be found in Donald  E.  Knuth's
       book  The  Art  of  Computer  Programming,  Volume  1: Fundamental Algorithms; 3rd Edition
       (Addison-Wesley    1997).     (Or    see    the    home     page     at     http://www-cs-
       faculty.stanford.edu/%7Eknuth/taocp.html.)