Re: Question about Descriptors

From: sol gongola (sol_at_adldata.com)
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 13:38:21 -0400

Tim Shoppa wrote:
>
> Steve Lionel <Steve.Lionel@REMOVEintelME.com> wrote in message news:<ic6in0lbvgia5e0ndrhlas4p62lkmq09c9@4ax.com>...
> > On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:24:50 -0400, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >
> > >You forgot BASIC, which may be the best at string processing.
> >
> > BASIC? PL/I? MUMPS? Pikers. For string processing, no language I have ever
> > seen beats SNOBOL4.
>
> I actually liked DIBOL for how it handled descriptors. It even
> let you effortlessly do math with numbers that were stored in strings.
>
> Tim.

So did cobol.
If you moved a character string with numeric characters
into a field define as numeric digits, you were able to
do math with it. PL/1 had a similar capability.

Other languages required explicit conversion between character and
numeric format (i.e. fortran encode/decode) or had an available
subroutine library to perform math with numeric character strings.

I think I missed the posting that defined string processing.
my 2 cents:
String processing includes a native ability to define character string variables
Move character strings between variables
Define default behaviour for moving strings between different length variables.
  i.e. truncate, extend with a pad character
Ability extract/use substrings
Concatenate strings
Search for a character or substring within a string

All the general purpose languages mentioned above had that
capability with or without descriptors. Except for C.

The additional pattern matching/replacing capability mainly belonged
to the interpreter and string processing languages such as snobol,
spitbol, awk, sed, and others.

sol

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