Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!yale!cmcl2!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Icon, was:Re: Discussions of languages (Was: Re: Modern langauges)
Message-ID: <3132@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 88 16:08:48 GMT
References: <6121@cisunx.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 45

in article <6121@cisunx.UUCP>, wpnst@cisunx.UUCP (Bill 'Deus' Nixon) says:

> Here at Pitt, one of the upper level CS courses uses Icon.

> It was designed bascially for String processing and is a superset of
> SNOBOL.  

Nope.  Icon does many of the kind of things that SNOBOL was designed to do,
but other than the fact they both process strings and they're both Ralph
Griswold languages, they're not all that closely related.  SNOBOL is 
syntatically a very primitive language.  Things like functions were added
after the language was initially defined, and as a result they're implemented
very strangely; you actually have to have your program jump around all 
functions you define.  SNOBOL, like older BASICS, is globally oriented and
starts execution from its first lines.  Icon is a more modern language,
syntatically similar to the Algol-derived languages like Pascal.  I used
SNOBOL in at course in college, and I've used Icon only a bit on my Amiga,
but I much prefer Icon.

> Allows for structured programming (for you Pascal type people)
> and symbolic manipulation of formulas.  Seems like it would work good
> for a parser.

I think it would be very good for writing compilers, if it could be easily
compiled itself.  Without that capability, it's going to be much too slow.

> I like the 'C' type statements - statements can succeed or fail, passing
> along a value for each case.

In SNOBOL, your control structures consist of an optional GOTO-type field on
the end of any program line that can act on success and failure.  Pretty
nasty, but I guess it works.

> Even tho it allows structured programming, I love having not to declare
> my variable.  I hate compiling my PASCAL or Modula-2 program, and have
> the compiler yell at me for not declaring some stupid counter variable.

> Bill 'Deus' Nixon  		One of the Univ. Of Pgh  ZETS !
> mail :	wpnst@pittvms.BITNET
> 	wpnst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.EDU
> 	{allegra, cadre, psuvax1}!pitt!cisunx!wpnst
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The B2000 Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
		"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"