On Sun, Nov 05, 2017 at 12:20:48PM -0500, Brian Callahan wrote: Hello Brian,
> But the website says that Icon bears little superficial resemblance to > SNOBOL4, which I take to mean you can't take snobol code and run it through > icon, which is what is needed :( As you've probably realised, SNOBOL and Icon (largely) come from the same brain, but with a different intended outcome. Icon was meant to be more like a "normal" programming language than SNOBOL, albeit Icon has backtracking (what Icon calls "goal-directed evaluation"). If I had to give a rough analogy, SNOBOL is sort-of Awk-ish, whereas Icon is an Algol derivative. As that might suggest, the two languages have a really different notion of control flow, which means that it would be hard to do a good job of translating between the two. Summary: if you want to run SNOBOL code, I doubt you have any alternative to a SNOBOL interpreter/compiler :/ I'm glad to see a SNOBOL system submitted to ports! [This brings back memories for me. Many moons ago, I created a language which integrated in Icon's expression evaluation ideas [1]. I learnt a lot!] Laurie [1] http://tratt.net/laurie/research/pubs/html/tratt__experiences_with_an_icon_like_expression_evaluation_system/
