Oberon Programming Language

Oberon is a modern object oriented programming language that evolved from the popular Pascal and Modula-2 language designs. It was originally designed as a simple general-purpose programming language used for teaching and demonstrating modern programming and operating system concepts. [1]


N. Wirth, the designer of Pascal, and J. Guthnecht, created Oberon in 1986 at the Institute of Computer Systems, ETH Zürich. The original version however lacked some of the features of objected oriented languages such as dynamic binding. Around 1990 Oberon was extended to become Oberon-2 and was made an object oriented language. The current version includes the OO features of data abstraction, type extension and dynamic binding of a message to the procedure that implements it. Other features include modular compilation, avoidance of memory leaks and dangling pointers, portability by means of being architecture neutral, and I/O operations are supported through shared libraries. [3,5]


This language is popular in many Universities in Europe and Australia. [8] Visit the referenced links for more information.





Links to more information:

  1. Oberon Reference Site. An overall reference point and a good place to start your own
    search for information about Oberon. Take a look at the Newcomers section!

  2. Ulm's Oberon Library. A useful reference of Oberon program modules and tutorial presented by The University of Ulm.

  3. Oberon 2 Reference Site. Definition of the Oberon-2 programming language by H.Mossenbock and N. Wirth

  4. Oberon code example. A block of sample code to generate Random Numbers.

  5. Brief History of Oberon. A bit of history describing the genealogy of oberon from simula, modula-2, pascal and Algol.

  6. Oberon 2 Syntax. Syntax of the Oberon 2 language in EBNF-Form.

  7. Oberon Introductory Course. An introductory course in Oberon, used at StatLab Heidelberg.

  8. The Oberon Webring. A website designed to put all the information on Oberon and related developments together in one place. This is a central starting point for websites related to the Oberon programming language or system environment.


List of References
  1. Laden, Guy ."The Oberon Reference Site." http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~guy/Oberon/ (3 February, 1999)

  2. Borchert, Andreas., Angewandte, Sektion. "Ulm's Oberon Library: Release 0.5." http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/oberon/0.5/lib/
    (3 February, 1999)

  3. Geßwein, Jürgen."The Programming Language Oberon-2" http://www-vs.informatik.uni-ulm.de/projekte/Oberon-2.Report/
    (3 February, 1999)

  4. Reali, Patrik. "Generate Random Numbers." http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~reali/CDB/Math.Random.html (3 February, 1999)

  5. "Oberon microsystems. "http://www.oberon.ch/docu/history.html (3 February, 1999)

  6. "Oberon-ItO Oberon2.EBNF." http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/oberon/ItO/www/Oberon2.EBNF.html
    (3 February, 1999)

  7. "Introduction to Oberon." http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/oberon/ItO/ (3 February, 1999).

  8. Fröhlich, Peter. "The Oberon Webring." http://www.factorial.com/hosted/webrings/oberon/ (3 February, 1999)

  9. Meese, Philip. "THE JAVA TUTOR." http://www.mercury.com/java-tutor/ (4 February, 1999)

E-MAIL: jstefane@harris.com
This site is currently maintained by John Stefanelli
Last update: 02/04/99 3:46 PM