29 Jul
2022
29 Jul
'22
8:07 p.m.
On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 1:02 AM Charles H. Sauer <sauer(a)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_Pack…
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-beg…
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).