snobol

[Bennett]

There is a compiled version of SNOBOL-4 called SPITBOL. This was originally
developed by Robert Dewar, I believe at Illinois. At the time this gave a
ten-fold performance improvement over existing versions of SNOBOL-4. Since then
a number of minor enhancements have been made to SPITBOL, and a new version
brought out called Macro-SPITBOL. This is written in a "Univeral" assembly
code, with the intention that it should be macro expanded to the machine code
of a target machine. It requires a very simple operating system interface to be
written. My experience of writing a translator from scratch, and an operating
system interface in a high level language is very favourable.  The translator
took one week, the operating system interface 4 hours and debugging two days. I
used the approach of making the translated image look like a compiled high
level procedure image, and linking it in to a high level system with all the
operating system routines. The target architecture was a Motorola MC 68000.

The Macro-SPTIBOL system was jointly developed by Dewar and Tony McCann of
Leeds University, England. It can be obtained from:

   Dr. A.P. McCann,
   Dept. of Computer Studies,
   University of Leeds,
   Leeds LS2 9JT,
   ENGLAND

   Tel: +44 532 431751

I believe Version 4.3 is now available.

J.P. Bennett
University of Bath
School of Mathematical Sciences
Claverton Down
Bath BA2 7AY
England
Tel: +44 225 826826