Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!clarke
From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Review of the Rascal Development System
Message-ID: <2861@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-May-86 14:19:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.2861
Posted: Thu May 29 14:19:43 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 29-May-86 14:37:39 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 37

(Sorry if this breaks some newsreaders; the original was so long I saved
it and went directly into vi to prepare this reply.)

In a message whose number I have dropped, dubois@uwmacc (Paul DuBois) writes:
>                                             ....  The people who wrote it
>   actually use it for their own work, hence are quite interested (from
>   other than a commercial perspective) in its being a usable product.
>   They actively solicit suggestions, and support is excellent, over both
>   phone and Usenet.

He's right.  I got an "instant" (turnaround roughly same as mail time there and
back) response to a very stupid (answer in the manual) question recently.

I pretty much agree with the review.  Rascal is nice; it mostly doesn't have
the worst features of either Pascal or C, and I haven't had any language-
related problems learning to use it, even though I've never used Pascal -- the
source of most of Rascal -- and I don't get along too well with C -- the source
of the rest.

The only exception to Rascal's niceness, really, is that loop construct (as the
review said).  If you like C's three-entry "for" loop, you'll love Rascal's.
It has *four* items in the list following the keyword "for"!  Luckily it also
has C's "break" statement, so you can say

	for(,,,) {
	  ...
	  if blah then break;
	  ... };

just like in Modula-2 or (plug) Turing.  There aren't any radically new
language features other than "for", so you shouldn't have any trouble learning
the language itself.  And the system is fun and easy to use.
-- 

Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
{allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!clarke