The SNOBOL Programming Language

Click below to go directly to a specific section:
History | Significant Language Features | Areas of Application | Sample Programs
Related Links | Printed References | Acknowledgements

History

SNOBOL, which is the acronym for String-Oriented Symbolic Language, was invented in 1962 by Bell Labs. SNOBOL then progressed until it reached it's finally implementation in 1967 called SNOBOL4. SNOBOL4 was implemented using string macros. This realized a virtual machine so that it could be implemented on a variety of different machines.

Significant Language Features

String Manipulation Operations - has several of these operations which allow a string to be tested for contents and make replacements in the string.
Pattern Matching- involves examining substrings, for the occurrences of specified substrings. Substrings are also known as patterns.
Dynamically typed - SNOBOL4 has no type declarations and no restrictions on the data type of the value of any variable.
Interpretive language - The compiler translates the program into a notation that the interpreter can easily execute.

Areas of Application

SNOBOL4 is use primarly as a research tool rather then for commercial applications.

Analysis of Literature
Analysis of Music
Computer experts using it for database programs.

Sample Programs

Related Links

Language Page
Click on Snobol to get to the Snobol page were features in Snobol4 are listed with a score to show how well these features work . Also looks at the speed of two snobol4 programs.

Printed References

Griswold, Ralph E. 1972. The Macro Implementation of SNOBOL4. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Griswold, R. E. , Poage J. F. , Polonsky I. P. The SNOBOL4 programming languge. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, inc.

Acknowledgements

The Vanilla SNOBOL compiler was provided by Catspaw,inc. The Hello world! program was written with the help of the Hello, World Page!.

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Last modified: 03:31 PM on 11/09/1996

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