True ... as I said I *like* snobol, I did not say I actually use it for
anything today! (there's a free version that runs on a dos box called
Vanilla Snobol that you should be able to find somewhere on the web .. )


What I meant if it was not clear is that I think the project should be
done in C even if some other language might make the parsing code
shorter or easier to write


Any thoughts on using a tool like lex/yacc / flex/bison for parser
generation? 



-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chuck Boody
Sent: 06 September 2004 16:29
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABCp proof of concept


Amazing!  I taught SNOBOL (3 and 4) to graduate level music students in 
19 (gulp) 69-70.  I even wrote a primer to teach it.  I did some fairly 
hefty music analysis programs with it too.  Now I've forgotten it all 
and thought it was totally gone as a language.  I too liked it for what 
it was designed for.  It is a real pig for some other things though.

I don't use C but suspect it is the way to go for this project.

Chuck Boody

On Monday, September 6, 2004, at 09:23  AM, John Chambers wrote:

> | well if my 2p are worth at least 2p to you, do it in ansi C if you
> want
> | anyone to use it. The advantages of portability and general 
> | comprehensability outweigh some fun features that nonstandard
> extensions
> | may have. I like SNOBOL but I would avoid inflicting it on other
> people.
>
> I'd prefer ansi C, mostly because it's the "least common denominator" 
> language that can be most easily included in the other C dialects and 
> the extensible languages like tcl, perl and python.
>
> Snobol's a fun language. It's too bad that it's so unknown outside of
> academia.   I  did a few projects with it back in the 70's, and since
> then, it's always been a real pain trying  to  use  what  passes  for 
> pattern  matching  in  other  languages.  Even perl is so awkward and 
> primitive in comparison.  I mean, you can't even  write  a  recursive
> pattern.   But I suppose we'd never be able to get away with anything
> as useful as snobol for our implementation language here.  ;-)
>
> I've tried to pick up icon a couple of times, but  I  was  never  too 
> successful in getting it to run.  Maybe I should look again.
>
> (I was also corrupted mentally by learning prolog.  Now it seems that 
> in  every  other  project, there's some multi-month task where I keep 
> thinking "This would be 10 minutes' work if  I  could  just  get  the 
> damned language to resolve a few expressions.  ;-)
>
>
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