Anybody else tried FreeBasic (aka fbc)?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| On 10/16/05, Kevin Cozens <kcozens-qazKcTl6WRFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

| > A friend of mine knew SNOBOL. I also remember (related?) languages SPITBOL,
| > WATBOL, and I think there were a few other 'BOL' languages around when I used
| > to hang out at the Engineering Annex at UofT.

Watbol was U of W's COBOL compiler.  Not at all related to SNOBOL.

| Something I have heard claimed (I do not recall where) is that the
| Unix I/O capabilities were essentially derived from the file
| manipulation API of SNOBOL.

Not that I've noticed.  Culturally, this might be the case -- SNOBOL
was developed at Bell Labs.  By SNOBOL IV (I think) Griswold had moved
to U of Arizona.  He designed a successor language, Icon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL

| It was dying and getting unavailable when I was in university, so I
| wound up not being particularly exposed to it.  It's obviously still
| available...  <http://www.snobol4.org/csnobol4/>

People loved SNOBOL the way others loved APL, LISP, and PERL.  It was
a very functional universe that helped you get stuff done on otherwise
ponderous machines.  SPITBOL was a very impressive compiled
implementation.  Although folks think they love a language, much of
the experience relates to the implementation.
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