SNOBOL (“StriNg Oriented and SymBOlic Language”)

Post by rashkov » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

hello_computer wrote: post #7

Of particular interest: A SNOBOL pattern can be very simple or extremely complex. A simple pattern is just a text string (e.g. "ABCD"), but a complex pattern may be a large structure describing, for example, the complete grammar of a computer language. It is possible to implement a language interpreter in SNOBOL almost directly from a Backus–Naur form expression of it, with few changes. Creating a macro assembler and…

Post by lagniappe » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

pcthrowaway wrote: post #31

rootbear wrote: post #11

When I was a sysadmin at the Naval Research Laboratory in the 80s, I was asked to install Icon, Ralph Griswold’s follow-on language to SNOBOL. I had a little trouble installing it on our Gould minicomputer and mailed in a support request. It was answered by Griswold himself! I felt special! (It was just a Makefile issue, as I recall. This was the era of tar source file distribution. No rpms, no snaps, no debs.)

> I had a little trouble installing it on our Gould minicomputer and mailed in a support request Not sure if this means snail mail, but I don't know why I never considered that before email, people used physical mail for things like tech support, heck, maybe submitting patches

Post by noisy_boy » Wed, May 03, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #29

This brings back memories of the way they used to teach programming. I had to learn some SNOBOL for a class, but to this day I've never written a line of it. We didn't even have access to such machines. Lectures were done on a chalkboard. The few programming assignments (in Pascal?) were done on our own in a lab elsewhere on campus. We'd print out the program and output and it'd be graded by hand.

Post by mysterydip » Wed, May 03, 2023, 6:30 PM UTC

lagniappe wrote: post #34

pcthrowaway wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had a little trouble installing it on our Gould minicomputer and mailed in a support request Not sure if this means snail mail, but I don't know why I never considered that before email, people used physical mail for things like tech support, heck, maybe submitting patches

Sometimes you'd see a program you wanted in the back pages of pcworld or another one of those huge computer-warehouse type magazines, and you'd have to fill out a little card and mail in a check while trusting that in a month or two it'd arrive.. I got wolf3d, jill of the jungle, and commander keen this way.

Post by greenyoda » Wed, May 03, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #20

tpmx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://raganwald.com/assets/snobol-green-book.pdf "4.6.4 Example - Tower of Hanoi" on pages 109-111 (the scanned page numbers)

Is it even a 1980s programming language without a Hanoi example? Here's the program in its all-caps, weirdly indented beauty: DEFINE('HANOI(N,NS,ND,NI)') :(HANOI.END) HANOI EQ(N,O) :S(RETURN) HANOI(N - 1,NS,NI,ND) OUTPUT 'MOVE DISC ' N ' FROM ' NS ' TO ' ND HANOI(N - 1,NI,ND,NS) :(RETURN) HANOI.END TEST HANOI (5,'A','C','B') END