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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
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