Having actually tried to learn this language, I'm astounded by its pattern matching facilities. Makes grep look primitive.
Being a slow starter with tcl, where would I start trying to
1. write a snobol interpreter in tcl, or 2. write snobol pattern matching tools in tcl?
BMA
escargo 30 Dec 2003 - I will just note that the successor to Snobol, Icon, also has a page on this wiki. It's pattern matching is different than Snobol's, but also very powerful. It is not based on regular expressions, but does pattern matching with other facilities.
If it ain't regular expressions, it ain't no good. - LES
Les's ideas are no better than his grammar. The only advantage of regular expressions over Snobol pattern matching and Icon string scanning is that regular expressions are very terse. Perhaps because of their terseness, they quickly become unreadable as they become more complex. Pattern matching and string scanning are far more powerful, are quicker to write, and are far easier to debug. One writer said that if you have a problem and you solve it with a regular expression, you end up with two problems. If you need to do anything complex with strings, your best bet is Icon string scanning. Larry
There's the beginnings of a Snobol wiki at [L1 ] BMA
And a site about Snobol in general at [L2 ]. escargo
There's a brilliant editor/IDE for Snobol written in Tcl/Tk at Rafal M. Sulejman's site [L3 ] BMA 15 Mar 2005