Lambda the Ultimate

SNOBOL Tutorial and Reference
started 1/17/2001; 8:10:55 AM - last post 1/18/2001; 7:31:22 AM

Chris Rathman - SNOBOL Tutorial and Reference

1/17/2001; 8:10:55 AM (reads: 756, responses: 2)

SNOBOL Tutorial and Reference

Well, as long as I'm on a Griswold kick, thought I'd send along the links for the SNOBOL language. SNOBOL is quite adept at string handling (regular expressions seemed to have been inspired by this language). Some do consider pattern matching to be a language within the language.

SNOBOL is showing it's age, though, as structured programming is not really supported - GoTo's all over the place. (I tried OO in the language with limited success). The flexibility in the pattern matching does not quite carry over into the structuring of the language.

The one thing it does have going for it, though, is that the language is fairly simple and can be learned pretty quickly. The free Vanilla SNOBOL compiler can be downloaded here if you're interested in exploring the language.
Posted to "" by Chris Rathman on 1/17/01; 8:13:07 AM

Ehud Lamm - Re: SNOBOL Tutorial and Reference

1/18/2001; 4:11:47 AM (reads: 758, responses: 0)

SNOBOL patterns are more powerful than regular expressions. They allow backtracking, assignment etc.

Thre GNAT Ada compiler provides an Ada package emulating SPITBOL patterns.

Chris Rathman - Re: SNOBOL Tutorial and Reference

1/18/2001; 7:31:22 AM (reads: 864, responses: 0)

In looking back in my AWK manual not too long ago, I did notice that they cited SNOBOL's influence a number of times. Not that RE's are better, but I get the impression that SNOBOL was influential in the early stages of development.

As for GNAT, Ada and SNOBOL seem an unlikely combination. Though I guess it's no worse than the RE engines used by a number of languages. :-)