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From: lindsay@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.lang.misc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.apollo,comp.sys.m68k
Subject: Re: SNOBOL for Amy
Message-ID: <406@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: Sat, 28-Nov-87 16:17:39 EST
Article-I.D.: PT.406
Posted: Sat Nov 28 16:17:39 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Nov-87 04:15:32 EST
References: <18476@amdahl.amdahl.com> <2034@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <18763@amdahl.amdahl.com> <324@mks.UUCP>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 21
Keywords: SNOBOL languages Catspaw Icon Awk
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Gee, that's a hefty list of newsgroups. I promise not to do it again.

Summary: I've used Snobol, AWK, and Icon. I don't use Snobol or AWK any more.

Reason: versus Snobol - Icon is structured: it has local variables, and
so on. It feels much more like a conventional language, without giving
up (much) in the pattern matching side. 
Versus AWK: more powerful - more data types, more constructs.
Versus both: zippo features like generators ( a language construct based on
coroutine execution ). Separate compilation and linking - essential for
any large effort, and fast enough to be OK for those five-liners. Also,
this allows you to link in programs written in other languages, hence,
reuse previsous code, or do any obscure system calls.

My experience: I've booted two successive Icon distribution tapes, each on 
both a Vax (4.2BSD) and a Sun-3. No sweat. Fast enough compilation for short 
quickies, fast enough execution for munging big input files. One bug found:
Arizona gave me a writearound very quickly and fixed it in the next release.
-- 
	Don		lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu    CMU Computer Science