Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site uwmacc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!teddy!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!jiml From: jiml@uwmacc.UUCP (Jim Leinweber) Newsgroups: net.wanted,net.lang Subject: Icon -- a worthy successor to SNOBOL Message-ID: <673@uwmacc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 22:06:41 EST Article-I.D.: uwmacc.673 Posted: Wed Jan 16 22:06:41 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jan-85 01:22:33 EST Reply-To: jiml@uwmacc.UUCP (Jim Leinweber) Followup-To: net.lang Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center Lines: 37 Xref: watmath net.wanted:5573 net.lang:1270 Some enquiries about SNOBOL under Unix have surfaced recently in net.wanted and net.lang. I don't personally know of a SNOBOL implementation, but there is a wonderful grandchild of SNOBOL running under Unix, namely Icon. A recent version runs under V7 and BSD 4.? on PDP11/70's and Vaxen; earlier versions run on many others as well. Icon is an offspring of the same Ralph Griswold of SNOBOL fame, and can be described in an oversimplified way as `SNOBOL meets structured programming'. It has untyped variables, associative tables, automatic storage assignment and reclamation, and string scanning operations, much in the manner of SNOBOL. It also has lists with flexible access, records, and modern control structures, such as recursion, procedures, nesting loops, IF's, etc. In place of SNOBOL's pattern matching operations, failure-driven alternation and co-expressions (co-routines which can pass and return values) are provided as additional control structures. These are completely integrated into the language, and have *great* expressive power. The result is programs 5% the size of comparable ones in, say, Pascal; but with more power and much better readibility than SNOBOL. I prefer Icon to PROLOG too. For more information, try /usr/src/new/icon on BSD 4.2 systems, or icon-project@arizona.UUCP (via gi, mcnc, ucbvax, utah-cs) icon-project.arizona@rand-relay (CS-NET, ARPA) A book `The Icon Programming Language', by Ralph & Madge Griswold, is available from Prentice-Hall. Jim Leinweber UUCP: ...!{allegra,ihnp4,seismo,...}!uwvax!uwmacc!jiml ARPA: uwmacc!jiml@wisc-rsch.arpa POST: MACC, UW-Madison, 1210 W. Dayton St., Madison, Wi, 53706