[REBOL] Re: Introduction
From: stephens:epigraph at: 23-May-2001 12:06
I know, I know...this goes WAY BACK in the email queue, but I missed it the first time
around...
I'd just like to set the record straight, though...
SNOBOL was invented by a gentleman that you may or may not know, but right now he's
the United States' chief technologist -- Dave Farber!
Dave Farber is also credited with having much to do with inventing, well,
THE INTERNET! :)
Seriously!
Dave Farber was/is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked at
Bell Labs, along with the likes of Ralph Griswold.
BTW, SNOBOL, probably the FATHER of all serious string processing languages,
is still available in commercial form of a SPITBOL compiler, and in freeware
form SNOBOL4+ at http://www.snobol4.com .
If you are old enough, you will remember the GREEN BOOK by Griswold, et al.,
which is about to be re-released after near obscurity at the same URL.
Whether or not you know it, SNOBOL4 is STILL ALIVE on the internet --
Microsoft uses it internally for their software testing, the U.S. government
is using it for parsing all their documents onto the web, Adobe is using
the Green Book for their document testing!
Anyways -- as always, I'm a SNOBOL adherent, having first used it in 1974
to write a complete macro-assembler in 600 statements in SNOBOL!
BTW, if you check the AWK book, you will find a credit in there to SNOBOL4!
(in the part documenting tables...), in other words, even the UNIX/C adherents
have to give their due to the part SNOBOL4 played in the early days at Bell Labs...
You will find "closet SNOBOL4" at the top in nearly every industry...
Robert Dewar - the programmer/developer of SNOBOL4 was a primary impetus in the
development of Ada, for example, and still provides GNAT Ada.
-ron
San Jose, California
At 09:05 AM 4/26/2001, Carl Sassenrath wrote:
