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SequenceL - declarative computation on nonscalarsI recently came across the language SequenceL, which it seems NASA is using in some of its human spaceflight programs. SequenceL is described as a high-level language for declarative computation on nonscalars. One of the key features of the language appears to be the avoidance of the need to explicitly specify recursive or iterative operations. For example, given the function definition Search(scalar Target, tuple [Subscript, Word]) = Subscript when Word = Target which applies to tuples, the programmer can apply the function directly to lists of tuples without any need to specify how that application will be performed, e.g. search(fox,[[1,dog],[2,cat],[3,fox],[4,parrot]]) → 3 search(rabbit,[[1,dog],[2,cat],[3,fox],[4,parrot]]) → [] The language designers (Daniel Cooke and J. Nelson Rushton) claim that this kind of thing leads to more concise and readable code, and a more direct representation of a specification. Unfortunately, the SequenceL website appears to be inaccessible at the moment. However, Daniel Cooke's site includes links to a number of papers and talks that describe SequenceL. In particular, the paper Normalize, Transpose, and Distribute: An Automatic Approach for Handling Nonscalars provides a detailed description of the "Consume-Simplify-Produce/Normalize-Transpose" approach that is embodied by SequenceL. There's also an overview of SequenceL available through CiteSeer. |
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