SCHOMAKE@HNYKUN53.BITNET (09/02/86)
(Sorry to dissappoint you, but this message is not going to
decrease the current #Questions/#Answers ratio. It contains
juicy info for the Language Conoisseurs among you, however.)
Hello,
does anyone have some information on MicroMumps for the ST?
I know there is a CP/M version of Mumps which could be used via a
CP/M emulator but I rather prefer a real 68000-based Mumps interpreter
for the ST.
{For those interested: Mumps is a real old oddity among computer languages.
It is interpreted or mixed interpreted/compiled, has a terrible syntax and
program structure but a beautiful tree-based way of dynamically storing data.
Examples:
MYARR(1) is an element of an array in memory,
^MYARR(1) is an element of an array on disk, no OPEN/CLOSE etc. needed!
Subscripts can be strings: ^OBJECTS("HUMANS","John","FATHER")="Bill"
so you can build a database or knowledge representation system rather fast.
Other features are powerful string manipulation/pattern matching and, in
the original language definition, multi-using + multi-tasking.
Adherents can often be recognized by their religious attitude (cf. APL, Lisp,
Unix monks), meditating on single-line system exploders. }
Lambert Schomaker
SCHOMAKER@HNYKUN53 (BITNET)
Nijmegen, The Netherlands.