Design
Programs That Transform Their Own Source Code; or: the Snobol Foot Joke
There is a collection of jokes at various places on the Web, for example Susan Stepney's How to Shoot Yourself In the Foot, that invites you to compare a C program for shooting yourself in the foot with programs in other languages. The C program is straightforward; those in the other languages have extravagantly elaborate effects. Except Basic, which manages only to soak your trousers with a water pistol. I was reminded of these jokes by Christopher Yeleighton's reply What about reflexion? to my New Year's resolutions about how to choose a programming language. Christopher asked whether I would use a language where I can't determine the contents of a function at run time. I do use such languages, but that's not interesting, so I'm going to show you how I program in one where I (almost) can. It's a beautiful and wonderfully mutable language called Snobol4, which enables you to pump out new statements at run time like a sausage-maker gone berserk, except that sausages are not executable. I hope that my article will teach you enough Snobol to understand the Snobol version of the foot joke.Related Reading
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