CompuServe Thread

Yes Icon is the computer language developed by Drs. Griswold. It will be a full implementation with everything the unix version has except pipes and the m4 preprocessor which I have never used anyway. The source I am working from is Icon version 5.9 for the Sun workstation so it is interpreted, the documentation I received seemed to indicate they were phasing out the compiler. Icon is really a system of three programs, the translator, which translates Icon source into a psuedo assembly language called icode; and a linker which "assembles" the icode file into pseudo machine language (called ucode) for a virtual machine; and an interpreter which then inteprets the icode. Icon allows you to precompile Icon procedures and then link them (using the "link" directive) to other Icon programs, thus allowing program modularization. The more ambitious can write their own new builtin functions in C, recompile the interpreter and then use the function just like the other builtin functions, useful if extra speed is required although Icon is fast enough for most things. I intend to place my port of Icon in the public domain. Whenever we figure a way to upload executables it may be placed in the data library here. Source would be available at request, if disks were sent, I don't think it would be a good idea to upload it, it comes to about 600K+ of C source. If you have any more questions let me know. Bye – Gary