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From: kwalker@CS.ARIZONA.EDU (Kenneth Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: RE:  Babe in the Woods
Message-ID: <9009241627.AA09502@gacham.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 16:27:29 GMT
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	Date: 24 Sep 90 15:42:51 GMT
	From: boutell@louie.udel.edu
	
	I've been keeping an eye on this group out of rabid curiosity, but have
	yet to see an general information posting, so forgive the waste of
	bandwidth: what is icon? Is it a publicly available language? Does its
	name imply that it is a GUI- based language? I gathered this impression
	from a few ads seen long, LONG ago.
	
	i've seen mention of an MSDOS version, so I can't restrain my curiosity
	any longer. Please enlighten!
	

Icon is not a GUI-based language. The name Icon was affixed to the language
before the usage of the term icon to mean a pictograph became popular. It has
been a while since I posted my standard reply to the question "what is Icon",
so here it is.

Icon is a high level programming language designed for string processing
and other non-numeric applications (numeric processing can be done, but the
language and implementation are not tuned for it). Goal-directed evaluation
with control backtracking is an integral part of the language. However,
Icon is very different from other languages, such as Prolog, which use
this evaluation scheme. Icon has a rich set of control structures which
use and control backtracking. Most of these control structures look and
act very much like the control structures of more traditional languages,
allowing Pascal-like programming where the full power of goal-directed
evaluation is not required. Icon incorporates generators as a natural feature
within this goal-directed evaluation scheme.

Icon has a flexible run-time type system: variables may take on values of
any type and automatic type conversions are performed as needed by
operations. There are a variety of types including strings, sets, associative
tables, and lists with positional, queue, and stack access methods. All
storage management is automatic; garbage collection is performed as needed.

Icon is available for many system: Amiga, Atari, CMS, MS-DOS, MVS,
Macintosh, OS/2, most Unix systems, and VMS. All the versions that the
Icon Project distribute are in the public domain, except for MS-DOS/386
executables which use a commercial DOS extender (the regular MS-DOS
distribution is public domain). The Macintosh version we distribute runs
only under MPW. There is a commercial Mac version that runs stand-alone.

If you want information on obtaining Icon, let me know.

  Ken Walker / Computer Science Dept / Univ of Arizona / Tucson, AZ 85721
  +1 602 621-4324  kwalker@cs.arizona.edu {uunet|allegra|noao}!arizona!kwalker