McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET.UUCP (01/15/87)
>However, I was wondering if you have considered using VAX/TPU? From what I >can remember of SNOBOL, TPU seems to give you all of the same constructs in >a much more structured language that, undoubtably, will run faster. VAXTPU is a more structured language. It contains pattern-matching operators. I find pattern matching in SNOBOL less confusing that in TPU, because in TPU pattern-matching involves complicated interactions between the patterns and the search function. In SNOBOL it's simpler, in my opinion. I certainly don't assume that TPU runs faster than SNOBOL. I am inclined to assume the reverse. This is because TPU is designed to be a text editor language and it's big, supporting lots of things that text editors might want to do. SNOBOL is more primitive, and more cryptic, but these characteristics often go hand in hand with better raw performance, depending of course on the implementation. Of course I have no figures to back this up...