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From: wheels@mks.UUCP (Gerry Wheeler)
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: <324@mks.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Nov-87 15:05:39 EST
Article-I.D.: mks.324
Posted: Fri Nov 27 15:05:39 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Nov-87 02:38:57 EST
References: <18476@amdahl.amdahl.com> <2034@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <18763@amdahl.amdahl.com>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 35
Keywords: SNOBOL languages Catspaw Icon Awk
Summary: How do SNOBOL and Icon compare to Awk?
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:11667 comp.lang.misc:916 comp.sys.mac:10380 comp.sys.atari.st:6522 comp.sys.ibm.pc:10577 comp.sys.apollo:566 comp.sys.m68k:668

[This discussion has been cross-posted to about a million newsgroups. I
was going to edit some out, but there may be people out there following
the conversation, so I left it.]

In article <18763@amdahl.amdahl.com>, kim@amdahl.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) writes:
> In article <2034@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>, page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes:
> > kim@amdahl.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) wrote:
> > >[Catspaw, Inc porting their MS-DOS SNOBOL to the Amiga]
> > >I thought I'd let all of you who are interested in text and string
> > >processing know that such an animal is on the way.
> >
> > How does it compare with ICON, available on a Fish Disk?
> 
> I'm not really sure ... haven't tried Icon out yet.  All I know about Icon
> is from a July 1986 article in "Computer Language" magazine, and what I've
> attached below.

How do SNOBOL and Icon compare to Awk? I did use SNOBOL for a class in
programming, but that was several years ago and I've forgotten it. I haven't
used Icon at all.

For those who don't know Awk, is was written by Aho, Weinberger and
Kernighan (hence its name). The basic outline of a program is a sequence
of pattern/action pairs. As the data file is read, each pattern (regular
expression) is compared to the current line, and the action is executed
if there is a match. The action parts bear a strong resemblance to C,
not surprisingly. As I recall SNOBOL, it was very easy to end up with
spaghetti code. Awk seems to be fairly easy to read. Mr's A., W., and
K. have just published a book about the latest version of Awk, for
those who are interested.
-- 
     Gerry Wheeler                           Phone: (519)884-2251
Mortice Kern Systems Inc.               UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels
  43 Bridgeport Rd. E.                            BIX: mks
Waterloo, Ontario  N2J 2J4                  CompuServe: 73260,1043