[TUHS] SNOBOL and progeny [Was: Re: Re: Line Numbers Before SysIII nl? BSD num?]

[John Cowan]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 1:02 AM Charles H. Sauer <sauer at technologists.com>
wrote:

> A few experiences as SNOBOL/Icon enthusiast, not expert, ending with
> limited tie back to Unix:
> o Introduced to SNOBOL4 in introductory programming languages course
> summer 1971 U.T. Austin
> o ca 1976 used SNOBOL4 on VM/370 to build Fortran to PL/I translator "The
> elapsed time between beginning work on the translator and getting a running
> PL/I version of APLOMB was approximately two weeks, and this achievement
> was a great relief to those who anticipated a much, much larger effort."
> https://technologists.com/sauer/The_Evolution_of_the_Research_Queueing_Package.pdf
> o ca 1985 (with minimal effort) modified/built Icon to run on PC/IX, began
> emailing with Ralph Griswold
> o Discovered IBM colleague Viktors Berstis and his SNOBOL
> advocacy/expertise (http://berstis.com/)
> o ca 1986 "With help from an ISC colleague, I created a PL.8 to C
> translator using Icon, that was used to facilitate some of the rewriting.
> [of the RT/PC VRM]"
> https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/
>
> Let us not forget Icon <https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/icon/>, Ralph
Griswold's own successor to Snobol.  Well-structured, portable to Posix and
Windows, "Prolog from another point of view" (the Icon implementation is
very much like the WAM).
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